This is a work of fiction.
“So there’s no self, no ‘I’ or ‘you’, just bodies conditioning each other. And those bodies ‘decide’ everything we do, based on that conditioning. And then our brains get to work, after the fact, to rationalize those decisions, to ‘make sense’ of them and integrate that knowledge into their completely useless belief systems, as if that makes any difference. Is that what you’re saying?”
“That’s what the current evidence from neuroscience would suggest, yes, as counter-intuitive as that might seem.”
“And all our ‘sense-making’ is just busy-work for the brain? Seems like an enormous waste of time and energy.”
“Seems that way. But I suppose when nature evolved this mental model of ‘self’ and separate ‘things’ and space and time, and that whole scaffolding of the nature of reality, she thought it might be a useful evolutionary advance.”
“I guess. Doesn’t seem to be working terribly well, though. So much violence and destruction and suffering in the world.”
“The problem is that this mental model is based on the assumption that our ‘selves’ are actually making these decisions, rather than just rationalizing them. Our whole society is built on top of that scaffolding, which leads to some absolutely crazy-making and cruel results.”
“So why do we ‘buy’ it then, when, with any close scrutiny, it actually doesn’t make sense?”
‘Not sure. Maybe because being social creatures we invented languages, possibly to relate better to each other. But those languages are actually powerful tools to condition each other and entrench the belief that that mental model actually depicts ‘real’ reality.”
“And yet we have these friends who don’t have that sense of themselves as separate creatures with any kind of control or free will, and they seem to function every bit as well as the rest of us.”
“Yes. From what I understand, they’ve just been conditioned to use language to describe things ‘as if’ they did have separate selves with agency. They’re playing the role of being and having separate selves, which to them is metaphor rather than reality, but they get conditioned to playing that role their whole lives.”
“So they’re not ‘aware’ they’re playing the role, because there’s no separate ‘self’ to be aware. It’s all just conditioned behaviour.”
“I think so. And there’s some evidence that very young children have no sense of self and separation. They have to be ‘taught’ it.”
“In which case these unusual adult people who talk about having no sense of self or separation, quite credibly but unfathomably, might have just reverted to that young childhood sense of ‘everything is just appearance of everything out of nothing for no reason’.”
“Or maybe in some cases they never accepted it in the first place. If we don’t actually need the mental model of self, perhaps in some people the conditioning programming of that mental model just never ‘takes’, and is never ‘missed’ because it serves no essential purpose.”
“Yeah, maybe. So maybe instead of using pronouns — wow is this an unspeakable heresy especially in this day and age — we should be talking about ‘this body’ and ‘that body’ instead of ‘me’ and ‘you’.”
“That’s where is gets really crazy. Because what science is discovering is that there aren’t even really ‘coherent’ bodies — the body is just a convenient collective name for all the conditioning chemicals and signals of the trillion-member complicity of what we call the ‘body’.”
“You’re saying it’s not even our bodies making all the decisions about what we do. It’s the collective decision of the trillions of living creatures inside these bodies. What utter chaos! And yet, somehow, life has prevailed for billions of years, almost as long as there’s been a planet.”
“Yes, except — I hate to do this — that description is just a story that necessarily requires there be separate things like creatures and planets, and the real existence of time. And apparently once it’s seen that there’s no self and no separation, it’s also seen that time and separate ‘things’ are likewise just appearances and illusions, the brain’s inventions to make sense of things. Inventions that actually don’t and can’t and don’t have to make sense.”
“God — what must it be like to not have that sense of self and separation? It must be terrifying. Our brains need order, need continuity, need things to make sense.”
“Based on the people I’ve talked to that no longer have that sense of self and separation, it’s only terrifying — a sense of ‘free fall’ — during the process of losing it. Because once it’s lost, there is no ‘self’, no ‘one’ left to be terrified.”
“And then what?”
“Apparently what remains is what could be described as ‘sadness’. Because so much is lost along with the sense of self and separation. In a way, everything is lost.”
“For example?”
“My friend told me that when the sense of there being a ‘self’ ‘dissolved’, and no longer appeared, those losses included:
- the motivation to do things ‘he’ once felt compelled to do, or to become something ‘he’ is not
- the sense that anything is extraordinary, or ‘true’
- the sense that anything is known, or can be known or ‘understood’, by anyone
- the sense that anything actually changes or moves through time (‘everything is constantly new, appearing and disappearing at once’)
- the sense that there is a ‘location’ (in space or time) of anything, or distance, or a past, present or future, or here or there, or before or after, or time or space
- the sense that anything is ‘caused’ by anything else
- the sense that there is such a thing as consciousness (or God)
- the sense that there are any ‘relationships’ of any kind
- there is ‘still’ happiness and sadness, and thoughts and feelings arising, but they aren’t conceived of as ‘his’ or as being ‘located’ inside ‘his’ body or brain
- any and all sense of safety and security
- any sense of perfection, ideals, possibilities, hope, hopelessness, or potential
- ‘personal’ suffering (though suffering can appear, it is not ‘anyone’s’ suffering)
- any sense of certainty, or of doubt
- any sense that there are ‘solutions’ to anything, or that they are even ‘needed’
- the fear of judgement by others, as well as of self-judgement (though instinctive ‘preferences’ remain)”
“Interesting list. Once could argue that wild creatures don’t have any of those things to ‘lose’, and they have functioned very well mostly for much longer than humans have been around.”
“Yes. I’ve struggled to reconcile my sense that wild creatures are probably more sensitive to pain than humans, because they live without the veil of self, but that they don’t ‘suffer’ in the same way that humans do, because they are mostly free of the judgments and expectations that human selves have been conditioned to have, which cause feelings like shame and jealousy and dread.”
“OK. Now, you said that he’s saying ‘feelings arise but they are no longer his feelings’. But surely there must be feelings there. He must get angry or scared when horrible things happen.”
“What he’s saying, I think, is that instinctive emotions like anger and fear naturally arise in the body, but they seem to dissipate quickly because they’re no longer ‘attached’ to ‘him’.”
“Mind-boggling. And you believe him?”
“I have no reason to doubt him. Very nice guy. He’s not making money ‘selling’ this. And his friends don’t much care to hear him talk about it, so it’s not a popular schtick. He’s just telling it like he sees it, the same as everyone else, to anyone inclined to listen.”
“And what’s left if all of that stuff in his list is lost?”
“I don’t know. Even though we may not realize it, perhaps everything is constantly being lost, so no wonder sadness is such a big part of the life of those who no longer have a sense of self that believes in continuity. Maybe sadness is the instinctive letting go of what’s constantly being lost, for no reason other than to evolutionarily enable us to go on without it. And then maybe grief is the human inability to let go.”
Silence.
“So there’s no timeless bliss in ‘awakening’ or ‘enlightenment’ to the ‘realization’ that everything is just oneness without reason or purpose or direction? The gurus are all frauds, then?”
“Not deliberately, I suspect. We all believe and say what we’ve been conditioned to believe and say. The gurus probably believe what they say. But yeah, no eternal bliss, I suspect, with or without a self.”
“I hope your friend’s wrong. I hope he’s just deluded by his conditioning just like everyone else.”
“Maybe. Maybe I just believe him, not just because he has no axe to grind with his very unpopular and unfathomable assertions, but because I want to believe him. I want to believe that everyone’s doing their best, the only thing that they can do, that no one is to blame or responsible for anything. That nothing needs to be done for everything to unfold the only way it possible could. Maybe I’m just tired of trying to make things better and to understand everything. Maybe I just want things to be that simple. And he’s reassuring me that they are.”
“I guess you’ll never know.”
“Nope. If he’s right, there will be no one ‘left’ to know.”
