Now
that's a provocative title for a blog post, if ever there was one.
Well,
do you exist or don’t you? ‘Of course, I do, you silly fool,’ I hear you say.
Well,
it all depends on what we mean by the word ‘I’, ‘me’, and ‘you’.
One
of the themes—if theme be the right word—of my blog posts is what is known as
self illusion. It is a teaching of Buddhism but the idea is by no means
exclusively Buddhist. Indeed, when I was in rehab many years ago, the
psychologist-in-charge, Jim Maclaine,
taught self illusion therapy. I have been expounding its virtues ever since. Why? Well, it worked for me! It still does.
Now,
when I say that self is an illusion, it is important to bear in mind what I
mean by the word illusion. It simply means that the ‘thing’ in question is not
what it seems. We tend to think that our sense of self (‘I’ and ‘me’) is something
that is real and permanent and stable—perhaps even something that is separate
and distinct from the person that
each one of us is. The truth is otherwise. Our sense of self seems to be incredibly
real. In a sense, it is, although it is not a ‘thing-in-itself’, so to speak.
However, there is now a wealth of scientific evidence attesting
to the fact—yes, fact—that the notion
of an independent, coherent self is an illusion, that is, it is not what it
seems.
 |
| Dr Bruce Hood |
Bruce Hood, pictured
left, a developmental psychologist, and Evan Thompson, pictured
below, a philosopher and cognitive scientist, are just a few experts who propound
the non-existence, that is, the illusion, of the so-called self. I thoroughly recommend
their books The
Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity (2011) [Hood] and
Waking,
Dreaming, Being (2015) [Thompson].
According
to Hood, our brains generate, that is, construct, this illusion of a self—it’s a
kind of a matrix—to deal with and respond to ‘a multitude of different
processes and decisions that are often in conflict with each other, often occurring
below our level of consciousness’. Our sense
of self emerges during childhood and is built up andconsolidated thereafter. Thompson refers to
an ‘enacted self’ (that is, ‘I’ as a
process) and explains
that we confuse the interplay of our ever-changing mind—which is a body-brain continuum
of sorts—as a supposedly stable, core ‘I’ or ego. He writes:
… the mental
repository is a subliminal data bank, not an ego, and it’s constantly changing
process, not a substantial thing. Hence this impression that there’s a self is
a mental fabrication and what the fabrication represents doesn’t exist.
The
bottom line is that there is no a distinct ‘I’ or ‘me’
in charge of our thoughts, feelings and actions. In the words of Hood:
[O]ur brain creates the experience of our self as a
model—a cohesive integrated character—to make sense of the multitude of
experiences that assault our senses throughout a lifetime and leave lasting
impressions in our memory.
In other words, the self is an illusion
created by our brain.
Now,
you may ask, ‘Well, so what? Why is any of this important, assuming that it is?’
Well,
let me explain, but first listen to these words of J.
Krishnamurti:
The very nature of the
self is to create contradiction.
 |
| Dr Evan Thompson |
Krishnamurti also wrote:
You know
what I mean by the self? By that, I mean the idea, the memory, the conclusion,
the experience, the various forms of namable and unnamable intentions, the
conscious endeavor to be or not to be, the accumulated memory of the
unconscious, the racial, the group, the individual, the clan, and the whole of
it all, whether it is projected outwardly in action, or projected spiritually
as virtue; the striving after all this is the self.
If you have ever struggled with an addiction, you will know all too well that there is, for example, the ‘self that wants to drink [or smoke, etc]’ and the ‘self that doesn’t want to drink [or smoke, etc]’. The two selves—and we generate hundreds of these selves every day of our lives, some of them becoming very persistent over time—are in conflict. At any moment of the day, one of them is fighting for supremacy.
Recovery
begins when you come to the realization that none of these selves are what they
seem to be. Yes, the so-called ‘self’ is nothing
more than an aggregate or heap of perceptions and sensations. It is, in
reality, a non-self. What is real is the person that you are. A person can change. You do what is
appropriate for a person in your
condition. You do not try to change the self that seems to you to be the
problem.
Know this. Your sense of self is a
constructed narrative that your brain has created. Do not try to change your ‘self’
or the particular little self that seems to be the source of your problem (eg
the ‘self that wants to drink’). Work on the person that you are. Give your pesky little self no attention. Give
it no power over you—for it has no power in and of itself. You, the person that you are, have power—the power
to change your life for the better.
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