NO SELF – NO EGO
Michael C. Patterson
Hi. Welcome to the Flourish As You Age podcast. I’m Michael C. Patterson. Our premise is that our ability to flourish is determined to a large extent by how we use our minds. So, we are examining different ways to manage our minds.
In this episode and a number of subsequent episodes I want to tackle the Buddhist ideas of non-dualism and the so-called illusion of Self.
Buddhist psychology claims that much of our suffering results from dualistic thinking, the feeling that we have a Self that is separate and apart from everything else. Buddhist say this is an illusion. Happiness and peace of mind, they suggest, can be found through awakening to the reality that we do not have a separate self, we are not somehow separated from our awareness, and that we are instead an integral manifestation of all of existence.
What are they talking about?
I find the Buddhist concept of non-duality is hard to grasp, yet it seems an important mindset to figure out. Do we have a separate Self, or are we somehow deluding ourselves to think so?
In recent podcasts we’ve been exploring the good feelings and peace of mind that accompany mystical experiences and psychedelic experiences. A big part of both types of experience is this sense of unity with something greater than ourselves; a dissolution of the ego and a unity with something beyond.
So, hard as it is I feel compelled to grapple with these hard concepts of no Self and non-dualism.
Essentially, the concept of non-duality is that there is no separation between the “I,” the knower. and what is known. No difference between the doer and what is done. There is no person who experiences something there is just the experience, the awareness. The Self, in other words, doesn’t exist. It is an illusion.
So, right off the bat, this idea is a bit strange and troublesome. Am I to believe that I have no self?
That’s ridiculous. I have a self. I’m right here being my Self. And second, why on earth would I want to get rid of my self? What would be left? My job is to build a self, not get rid of it.
This was basically my reaction when I was a younger man and was first introduced to mediation and Eastern philosophies. Now, after seven decades of living and learning, I’m more inclined to entertain the idea of non-dualism and see where it leads.
So, what the hell are the Buddhist sages talking about when they say the self is an illusion?
The way I start to get my head around head around the dualism problem is by thinking of it in terms of the hemisphere hypothesis as articulated by Iain McGilchrist.
Emerging brain science makes it pretty clear that the two hemispheres of the human brain have very distinct ways of attending to the world. The left hemisphere processes information very differently than does the right hemisphere. McGilchrist makes the further point that LH modes of perceiving have come to dominate.
I believe that when Buddhists and meditation leaders say the self is an illusion, they are referring to the way our LH relates to the world.
The LH is our conceptual brain. It creates concepts about the world and about how the world works. Some of these concepts are fairly accurate, others are nonsense, but the LH believes them whole heartedly whether they are right or wrong.
Our conceptual mind creates short-hand, short-cut summaries of what it thinks is going on in the world. It creates maps of the territory. It creates virtual reality simulations meant to duplicate certain aspects of our experience. Problems arise when we forget that the map is not the actual geography, the simulation is just a cartoon representation (re - presentation) of actual life. In other words, the conceptual world created by our LH is not real. It is an illusion.
In addition to creating snapshots of the outside world, the LH also creates snapshots of our internal world. It puts these internal snapshots together to create a concept of Self. It uses these snapshots to spin narratives about who we are, how we think, what we feel. The conceptual mind creates a kind of avatar that represents a grossly simplified version of all we have experienced, thought and done. It is our ego.
When Buddhist say the self is an illusion, I believe they mean that the Ego is an illusion. The ego is a construction of the LH. It is our concept of our self. The story of “Me” is a compilation of independent memories of things I once did, thought and felt. It is a real story, and it is helpful in summarizing what I’ve experienced, but it isn’t really me. In that sense, it is an illusion.
Part of the problem with the story is that it is frozen in time. It is a kind of snapshot of an event that captures one isolated moment, in one very specific and unique set of circumstances. But these circumstances no longer exist. We are not frozen in time. We are constantly changing. We are a process, an emergence. Immediately after the snapshot was taken we changed and morphed into something slightly different - or perhaps even radically different.
So, in this sense, the story of our Self, the ego is make-believe. It is an illusion. It might be a useful illusion at times, but we get ourselves into trouble when we start believing in our self as a fixed entity rather than as something more fluid and emergent.
Okay, so perhaps we can begin to see that the Self is an illusion. But, if we take away the ego, if we dispense with the life narratives, what is left? Well, remember that we are just taking away the LH mode of operation. When we silence the LH, we are left with the way the RH attends to the world, we are left with direct experience of life.
When we quiet the conceptual mind of the LH we spend more time in the sensory and experiential mind of the RH. When this happens we are living rather than thinking about living, experiencing rather than analyzing and interpreting our experiences.
So, I don’t think “No-self” means no self at all. I think it means you get rid of the fake self, the LH’s virtual self, and begin to interact with the world using your sensory self, the RH perspective.
The LH perspective is dualistic because there is the illusion that your virtual Self, your avatar, is seeing and moving and making things happen. The LH interprets experience, categorizes it, analyzes it, remembers it. The experience and the experiencer are separated. The experiencer observes the experience from the outside.
The RH perspective is less dualistic because it simply experiences what is going on. No interpretation. No representations. The experience just happens and you are an integral part of that experience. No separation. No self. You are inside the experience, feeling it unfold and flowing with its emergence.
In the next episode I want to recount the story of Jill Bolte Taylor who suffered a massive stroke to her LH, silencing her conceptual mind. Her recovery took eight years and during this time it was her RH - her sensory/experiential self - that was running the show. Her story is a great illustration of what it would be experience the world without a strong sense of self.