The Origins of the Self

 

M

emory: Memory has a vital role to play in the formation of the self.  Memory retains much, if not most, of what has been experienced in the past, and makes it readily available for remembrance, recognition and recall.  Our knowledge is acquired first through our senses and through our memory retained, and then processed through various mental functions to generate further conclusions which also go to form the content of our memory. 

When we initially presented with anything, that is, when we experience anything for the first time, we barely have any notion of it unless and until our past operates on it and generates recognition and then the memory process takes over. 

We are not passive when we experience things or events.  In the process of recognition, there is the awareness of myself as recognizing the object as something, but further, there is also, depending on our background, an attitude taken toward the object, either favorable or unfavorable or indifferent.  This attitude in some sense is built into the process of identification.

The problem of the self hinges more on the feeling of me and the mine.  I see a television set.  I like it.  Then I want to make it mine by buying it.  Same goes with a watching a person who is sexually attractive or what my background considers as beautiful.  A remembrance of this is bound to generate the ‘I’.  And reflection on a series of memories is bound to generate a constant (perhaps underlying) ‘I’; through reflection I unite these memories as my memories. 

Identification:  Identification has everything to do with how the self is formed. Let’s look at this from a neuroscience point of view: Whatever I am presented with, whether it is a verbal command, or a pleasant or painful sight, music, problem or what not, in the initial moment, it is just us.  We don’t differentiate between ourselves and what we experience.  Here is where I think the mirror neurons may be at work. It’s just in that very moment the self is being formed.  But then there is also the awareness of what we have been exposed to a moment ago, and because of the previous identification, we now have a sense of ‘I’ am listening or watching ‘that’.  This in ancient Indian philosophy is described as the object being reflected in the internal sense (or antahkarana).[1]  And that seems to be the source of the ego or the ‘I’.

How does identification, the feelings of ‘I’ and ‘mine’, the I-sense, get created?  It is still a far cry from the self.  I see a nice chair and for the moment I am attracted to it.  ‘I want this chair,’ I tell myself.  In that very moment there is the self operating.  I was identified with the chair a moment ago, and now in a reflected moment, the chair becomes the object of my thought and becomes at the same time the object of my desire.  So here, there is memory operating in the reflection, and that is turned into a thought, which automatically splits itself, to use UG’s phrase, as myself and what I think about or desire.  The attraction or repulsion has already occurred in a previous moment.  Compound this process by a million times, we have our mental life.  The very moment I reflected in the object I was previously identified with, or thought about, is the beginning of the mental life in which mental objects represent objects I was previously exposed to.

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Identification in some form or other fills our lives and relationships with others as well as with groups.  We can identify ourselves with practically anything, either positively or negatively – with our beliefs, ideas, bodies, sex, race, religion, caste, nationality, with music, art, groups and subgroups of various sorts -- there is literally no end to the list.  In some fashion or other, the world becomes our world, because the world is ‘me’.  I am involved, interested, concerned, attached, repelled, or am in conflict with the various elements of ‘my’ world.  In fact, the conflicts (such as wars, exploitation, oppression, hatred) as well as attachments, loyalties, admiration, submission or domination, name it, they are all based on my being identified with each of the elements of relationship.  I have no separate existence except in relation to the things or people I love or hate or am indifferent to.  The wars of the world are wars within me.  When I accuse the President of this or that, I am the President as well as the accuser.  No wonder most of our psychological problems can only be resolved by looking them in relationships.  If, for instance, when I am depressed, I am only depressed in relation to something concerning which I am frustrated. 

Conditioning: Without conditioning and a series of habits, our living becomes impractical, and indeed, impossible.  We would lose our skills, our abilities, our manners, our styles, and indeed the entire gamut of our relationships with ourselves with others and the world in general, for almost all of these are based on habits.  Most of these are acquired through conditioning.

Traces of the Past:  Before we discuss conditioning, we need to go into the phenomenon of our past influencing our psyche and our behavior.  Everything that happens to us, and every experience we have leaves an trace in our psyche[2].  All the experiences have a drag or pull, as well as a flavor or ‘taste’ to them. They also have a tendency to repeat themselves, primarily because they were felt as pleasant or painful in their first occurrence. As I said above, such a drag keeps us in a ‘track’ of mind until the ‘energies’ are discharged or dissipated.

Furthermore, each time an experience is recalled, it tends to reinforce itself.  Notice how the first time when we are introduced to something, we may be somewhat neutral or indifferent in our attitude to it, such as smoking (or even irritated by it), but on the subsequent occasions we are less and less inclined to treat it with disgust or repulsion, until we get used to it.  By then it has become a habit, which develops a force of its own and makes it harder to quit. Past traces, in my conjecture, are physiological, and by their sheer force and strength have a way of thrusting themselves into consciousness through our thought process, creating duality and the consequent tensions and conflict.

Each time an image (be it visual or auditory), a thought or a previous action relating to habit occurs in our mind it pulls all the relevant knowledge and experiences surrounding it, as well as our previous responses to the habit, which too can have a snowball effect.  As this involves the thought process, coupled with self-talk and body awareness, we have the feeling of the self or the ‘I’ as the subject component of the thoughts and experiences.

Each cluster of habit unified by knowledge and experiences is a unit self.  Since we have many such habits which constitute actions, experiences, thoughts and beliefs, we now have a conglomerate of selves.  However, in reflection and otherwise through memory, we do connect various instances of the habits as well as the habits with other habits and other parts of our mental life.  In that reflection we get the notion of unitary self.[3]  

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What Pavlov and others called conditioning is a subset of habit formation.  Conditioning is habit formation hooked to an artificial stimulus.  Crying when in pain is a natural response.  And if we cry just because someone says you should cry, and that becomesa habit, it’s conditioning, because it’s reinforced positively or negatively with a reward or punishment of some sort.  As I said in one of my articles, the self is nothing but a set of habits, but I could have said it’s a series of conditionings. 

The relationship between habit and conditioning is more subtle than even this. Whether we are induced to do something on a certain occasion, or we just stumble into an action or experience, they all leave an impression on us.  Initially, they leave either a pleasant or unpleasant or neutral sensation or feeling with us.  Then either we tend to do the same thing again, because it has left us with a pleasant impression before, or because we are repeatedly induced by others to do the same thing, each time with some reinforcement; or negatively speaking, we avoid doing the same thing or resist it because of the painful sensation it left with us before or after a negative reinforcement, such as a scolding or physical punishment.    In either case, the result is the formation of a set of habits. Of course, behind all this habit formation and conditioning is the pleasure principle: pursuing what is pleasant, avoiding what is unpleasant or painful and being indifferent to the others.

Take for instance, the idea of saving, whether it is money or food or something else.  Our parents keep telling us we should save the money, of course, giving us each time some rationale for doing so, and the practice seems pleasant, or not painful at any rate.  It is reinforced.  It is not only an instilled habit, but a conditioned habit, because of the positive or negative reinforcements that went with it.  Saving becomes a style of living, which can persist throughout one’s life.

Same with results of comparison of our performances with others (especially other kids when we were young):  we were told repeatedly to work harder, to catch up with other kids, excel in our performances, and so on.  We either start feeling inferior or superior, depending on how we fared in the comparison.  Each time we don’t quite perform according to an accepted norm or as well as someone else, we do not just feel badly for the moment, but that experience leaves us with an indelible mark.  We start to worry constantly about our performance, as there is an underlying feeling that we might not be performing as well as we could.  If the feeling of our inferior performance is registered repeatedly, we start branding ourselves as not just inferior to someone or someone else’s performance, but as an inferior person.  And this, of course, is a conditioned response.  The feeling or attitude toward ourselves lies at the root of our mental life and governs our behavior through compensatory measures.  We are not always aware of this feeling or attitude.  But it determines our relationship to our work, to others, and to life in general.  Thus formed, the feeling becomes a part of the general motivational network. In other words, it becomes what one might call our ‘unconscious’.

Indeed each of these basic conditionings, being a habit or set of habits, constitutes the self and governs our interactions with our world and ourselves.  This, I think, is what’s behind my assertion that the self is nothing but a set of habits.  When I talk about the self here, I really mean the self as a person who has a certain personality, set of propensities, character traits and so forth.

We still don’t quite know how exactly conditioning works:  you can’t quantify it:  an experience even if it is mild can leave a lasting impression and mould your character, such a simple act of kindness or generosity. Take another example:  A single bit of remorse can turn into guilt and become part of your memory that can last for decades, and keep sprouting in your consciousness from time to time, even for no apparent present reason, and prick your conscience.  And the will doesn’t seem to have much control over its arising or bothering.

The feelings of gratitude or guilt, for instance, arise from assessment and judgment of the situation in which they arise.  When I judge something, the whole of me, with my previous knowledge and experience seems to be acting as a unit and assessing the current situation on the basis of the norms it already had acquired in its past.  That explains why different people not only experience the situation differently, but also assess it and judge it differently.  When the will is operating to control these feelings, it is operating according to a different set of standards, and may or may not succeed in controlling the given feeling.  It all depends, of course, on which side is stronger.[4]

Most important to take into consideration here is verbal conditioning.  It has a lot to do with the self since the self and its awareness are mediated through language.  It also plays a significant role in habit formation and perhaps also conditioning and mimicry.[5] There are much subtler forms of conditioning:  A simple frustration, a feeling of hurt, feeing of losing one’s ground, a feeling of infatuation for someone, situations which might generate a momentary feeling of euphoria, and so on, leave such an impression on us that the traces of some of these feelings last the rest of the day, or for prolonged periods of time, and can leave one with long-lasting crippling psychological or emotional problems.  Conditioning also provides us with techniques and modes of managing our time, boredom and our relationships, and even temporary emotional problems such as bereavement, frustration, loneliness and depression.  But when these techniques prove inadequate, especially in dealing with emotional states such as boredom with life, chronic pessimism, and serious mental illness such as chronic depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder or bipolar mood disorders, we seek the help of professionals or other providers of counsel such as spiritual teachers.

 

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[1] Unfortunately this Samkhya notion of antahkarana has three aspects to it, the attending, thinking (the intellectual aspect) and the ‘ego-maker’, which in turn has three aspects: abhimana (attachment), asmita (the ‘I am’-ness: i.e. the I-sense), overrating one’s ego-centric point of view, and atman (the ‘I’ or self).  None of these notions really elucidate how the notion of the ‘I’ itself arises.  My attempt is here to delve into that notion.

[2] In Indian philosophy these are called Samskaras

[3] See next chapter.

[4] Such, indeed, are the sources of our personal morality.

[5] This may also involve mirror neurons.