Logical deduction that the self is an illusion
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- Опубликовано: 20 авг 2024
- The way we see ourselves is an illusion. Take a dictionary and look up the word illusion and reality. Know when an illusion comes into existence and you can logically deduct that the way you see yourself, or others, is in fact an illusion.
Great video Mike really summed up the illusion of self.
Thank you Oliver. Great to see that someone finds it informative!
I have feelings of anxiety .. and started asking am I responsible for being this way? did I create this self? and the answer is no .. I had nothing to do with it.. then I asked well can I make this go away .. stop the thoughts and feelings? the answer again is no .. so I concluded there is no I in control .. there is simply no one .. only the experience.. the I is an illusion. thank you Mike.
Great to read that the information presented helped you. Thank you for your comment.
there is not even an experience or being when there is no one :)
Great video! You really made it easy to understand. The analogy with the magician and how there is no illusion if there is no observer was really good! That made it all very clear and specific. Thanks for sharing!
It's amazing how people can't grasp that the self is an illusion. The real "you" is the whole universe. You are the universe aware of itself not something separate from it. "You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way a wave is something the whole ocean is doing" - Alan Watts.
I think it is more amazing that the universe is growing in self reflecting capacity. That real "you" that you refer to also includes those people that don't grasp the illusion of self as you put it. What you seem to have as an illusion is that those 'people not grasping' exist in objective reality. Truth is that those people not grasping is a concept that lives in your mind. It is dependent on your thought to exist. There is no such thing as not grasping an illusion without your consciousness creating it. Hence it is subjective reality. Therefore you create 'those people not grasping' in your experience. But in objective reality there exists no such thing as negations. Only the things that do exist, independend of the mind. I suggest to study the subject more to see that thinking that you understand is equivalent to experiencing the illusion of a self. It is not the concept that, when intellectually understood, matters. It is how you behave yourself with respect to altruism and holism (non-duality) that matters. Understandimg the illusion of self moves you into that direction. So that is how you can quantify how deep you truly understand. How much did the ratio of caring for others vs caring for oneself shift towards what fits the definition of altruism? Only then the intellectual understanding really matters in my experience. I thank you for your comment as it made me realize more how important it is to me how I am from moment to moment.
Also, I wouldn't state "people can't". You don't know what you don't know. And thus you can't put your focus on something you do not know. But to seay that people can't grasp it? I think it is more a matter of time before they will understand, and not whether they can or can't. I also think it is not a binary state but more of a shift. Then again, it doesn't really matter if you understand it or not. A person that doesn't understand that the experience of the self might be an illusion can still BE (and therefore behave) holistically (as in non-duality). You do not have to consciously produce stomach acid. You don't even have to know how it works. It just happened as it evolved over time that it was beneficial to do so. I think that same pattern applies to this subject as well. When a soul is born into this world, and no one has the illusion of a self and everybody is behaving holistically, then I think the chance is high that the new born develops the same holistic behavior without intellectually understanding why. Understanding it intellectually isn't necessary anymore, there is just a SENSE that being and behaving holistically is THE way. The same as when developing a temperature sensor. When doing so, you need to understand the principles at play, once created, it is enough to know how to interface with the sensor in order to use it. There is no need anymore to understand the deeper levels of how it works, there is only the act of interfacing. There is no need to understand how a semiconductor works in order to browse the web. Before there was an interface to browse the web (computer, keyboard and mouse and an operation system where developed, people needed to understand princples at play to create all that (including the internet of course). Now that it is in place, and people are familiair with the interface (how to operate a computer and start a webbrowser), only intention is required to work with it, the rest goes automatically. SO understanding the illusion of the self is like a boat to cross the river. Once the river is crossed the boat is no longer of interest. When the sense of holism and how to be it is in place, there is no need anymore for the intellectual understanding of how the perception of the self can be an illusion. It becomes even a waste of energy to let your mind go over the matter! You are not diving in to the matter of how to create a digital temperature sensor anymore. You just buy an IC that senses the temperature within the temperature range and accuracy of your acceptance criteria and off you go, spending your energy on a greater cause.
Mike de Klerk yeah you are right. Those people that dont grasp the concept are only in my subjective reality and not objective reality. And that you dont need to understand it to truly know it, like how I know how to move my arms and legs and work my thyroid gland without understanding how the cells and brain actually does this. (Sorry for using the word I in that sentence saying "how I know", I know there isnt a "me" that knows it and there is simply just knowing but I cant really write that in words very well. So when I say "I", forgive me, its just a habit of how we learn to use language and write it down).
So heres the thing. The people who don't grasp the concept, like my parents for example, dont exist. People who grasp the concept like me and you dont exist either. So why do you bother trying to explain it to these non existing egos. Why do i try explain it to my parents? Sorry for the use of the word "you" and "i". Both the organisms we call "you" and "me" still seem to try tell other organisms about this concept. Is that not pointless when you fully see that the whole universe is just a dance of pattern and no ego's exist. Alan watts would say he talks about it because he just likes talking about it. And it just gives him a nice feeling so he continues doing it.
Like even though I'm aware of egos not existing I still give people compliments and try not to be mean to them. I know if im mean to an "organism" it creates the subjective reality that is an unpleasant feeling for them. Now i know subjective reality seems to be an illusion but i dont want to create a bad illusion. Also I try help them by explaining this concept to them. But what is the point in trying to explain it to anyone if my ego and all their ego's arent actually there. If the subjective reality is an illusion and you fully see that why not stick a knife in someone when anger takes over you? Its like as if we know its an illusion but must live as though it isnt.
What are your thoughts on that?
Hi markdeley: thank you for your reply!
Effectiveness I would say. It is not effective to work with illusions. It is more effective to have correct mental map of reality. That way, working becomes almost effortless. It almost isn't work anymore. But just doing what is great (like what Alan Watts refers to): creating greater and more complex structure in an infinite endless space, just like fractals. I think this would add to your desire to have an answer on your question: buddhism.stackexchange.com/a/22330/11706
You want yourself to get rid of illusion, and others as well. Because we then move into the correct direction: endless creation of a structure that lends itself as the basis for further creation. Again, like a fractal pattern. Apply the formula correctly: endless fractal patterns. Deviate from the formula: you run into a dead end.
Mike de Klerk thanks for the reply
If "you" create illusions then you the entity exist, you the entity are the self. Logical deduction is something a self does.
Hi William. I'm not sure what you mean exactly. I agree that there is something. But whatever that something is, will always only be a mental construct in my mind. That mental construct, as a model of reality, might be useful. As long as I understand that it is a model, and not the actual 'thing' itself, there is no illusion. As soon as I (subconsciously) assume that a mental construct (or a part of it) is the real thing, I am delusional. Spiritual enlightenment in Buddhism for example is getting rid of being delusional.
An example of something like a mental construct that is perfectly of good use is my perception of a car. That mental construct in my mind allows me to operate it and relocate this body to another coordinate in this space/time reality. But a lot of parts of the ego mental construct are not of great use, and mostly in the way of cooperating with (seemingly) 'others'. Those constructs exist, from my experience, to protect that which I know is usable from that which might be destructive in the greater good. So ego is mostly kept in place because of fear. Finding out how to navigate reality in certain aspects and ways dissolves the fear because it is replaced with trustworthy experience and skill, and by that, the ego mental constructs are relinquished. Then that energy comes free to create for useful mental constructs, and thus add more value to reality with respect to the greater good. So es, there is something that is creating an illusion. Let's call it: the observer. Like in quantum mechanics that plays a crucial role (double slit experiment) for reality to come into existence. Now maybe that 'you' is much more like a computer performing calculations, than that it is the mental construct of a (in my case) 30 year old male that likes to ride a motorcycle identification kind of 'me/you'.
The self is simply" knowing" I know my thoughts, I know my ideas, I know my feelings, I know what I like and don't like. Knowing Isn't something mentally constructed it is more subtle than that. Our material experience is of three states, wakefulness, dream and deep sleep but our consciousness underlies these three states by being the witness of how time influences our experiences but time has no influence whatsoever on the experiencer of these three states. Our material experience is of three states influenced by time but our" being" however is of no states it is just the presence of being the eternal now. An analogy is that our consciousness is like a movie screen and all the images,lights,colors, sound,that come and go on the screen ( consciousness ) are all things within consciousness but consciousness itself is aloof or not mixed with the images,llights,colors, that appear on the screen. Just as the movie screen is independent of the things appearing on it, consciousness is independent of the three states of material experience. consciousness is its own domain, it underlies the mind so the self isn't a construct it is eternity "knowing" itself
Thank you for your reply. I think we are using different words but mean the same. Where I may refer to that which computes (so not the computation itself), you refer to the eternal knowing I assume. So what you are implying is that the title of the video is wrong/misleading? I agree. What do you suggest? What we refer to as self is something of non-duality. Not everybody may think of 'self' in that respect. Replacing the word 'self' with 'ego' seems more correct. But maybe that is less effective at reaching those who are seeking for this information. Those who know how it works already (like you seem to do), don't need this information anyway. What do you think?
Maybe the title should be "logical deduction that the ego not the self is an illusion" you see, the self Isn't the ego, people have different egos, you can have a big ego, a timid ego, an aggressive ego, your material personality is a expression of your false ego, but people don't have different self's, knowing is just knowing, knowing is the same for me as is it for you. Consciousness has no race,no creed,no belief,no religion, it transcends all that. When we understand that essentially that we are all the same being consciousness and that it is ego that separates us then we can develop saint consciousness.
The self exists. We just aren't it... WE don't exist. WE are our bodies. And our bodies creates the SELF that other people see.
are you familiar with depersonalisation? what do you think is the difference between dp and awakening to the illusion of self?
ArcaneSOAKES one is the reemforcment of illusion, the other that is the clear seeing of maya for what it is, I would think. 😊😉
Depersonalisation is often referred to as a disorder. The literal meaning of the word does not contain this association, however. So the word 'depersonalisation' in itself is a pure functional description of 'less personal than before'. But Depersonalisation disorder means that the 'functioning' has become disruptive.
That is not the case when seeing consciously how you do not need to create the illusion of the self, in order to work with reality. THat is not a disorder. On the contrary, it enables you to work more efficiently with reality, and hence, create more order even. In that respect it is the complete opposite. You let go of the creation of the self because you know and see how it handicaps you.