The Illusion of the Self 

T

he idea that the self is an illusion is age-old.  The Buddha’s Skandha theory is just that.  That there is no permanent self, an agent, someone doing things from behind the scenes, someone enjoying, suffering experiences, someone who has a character and being responsible for his actions, having voluntarily chosen by him, and all that.  It’s interesting to note Nagarjuna’s comments on the self.  The self is not an entity outside of the aggregates, i.e., thoughts, sensations, etc.  It’s nothing without yet.  Yet they themselves have no substance of their own.  It’s just a conventional reality, although it’s not totally unreal.  We, of course, take that to be a permanent entity outside of the aggregates.  That’s where the mistake is.

But here in Nagarjuna there is no explanation (empirically, I mean) as to how the mistake arises.  Can we penetrate that illusion?

The problem with the Skandhas as well as UG’s idea that there is no self, but there are only thoughts, occurring from moment to moment, or Hume’s idea that the self is only a ‘bundle of impressions’, has one big problem.  If the self is some thing that is composed of the skandhas or impressions, then what about the impressions themselves? What are they composed of?  Do they have an independent existence of their own?  Same goes with UG’s thoughts?  If there are only thoughts, what are thoughts made of it?  He says that they are nothing but ‘noise’?  What noise?  Noise as is heard by the mind subjectively?  The problem with any of these explanations is that it only leads to an infinite regress of ‘it’s nothing but…’s. 

Something similar can be said about the self as an agent?  A Buddhist or UG would say that there is no self doing anything, that ‘agency’ is an illusion.  There are only individual thoughts (impressions) succeeding one another.  Actually one could say the same thing about any motion.  There is nothing moving; there are only individual states successively replaced by one another. 

Unfortunately, this is not very helpful either.  You can’t excuse your behavior by saying first I had such and such a desire, and then some action followed.  I don’t exist.  And I didn’t do anything.  This won’t sell in any market place.  Who is it that didn’t do anything?  The problem is objectively speaking everything seems to happen in my consciousness, as if I have no role to play in anything.  But viewed subjectively, the same scenario would better be interpreted or understood as my willing and carrying out my intentions after weighing the alternatives. 

 Yet, it’s for this ‘I’ we desire, we avoid, we are ambitious, accumulate, fear, are aggressive and so on and so forth. And these include the fear of death.  All these result from this belief in the ‘I’, based on our inability to truly view ourselves objectively as we view others, or simply as persons in the world.   No matter how much we objectify our beliefs, and prejudices, we cannot totally objectify ourselves.  For we then do not need to accumulate or fear anything.  It’s useless to call this an illusion, for it seems as if we can never be totally free from this feeling of and belief in the ‘I’ or the identity of the self.[1]

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The reason, I think, behind the illusion of a unitary self is this: although the self is nothing but a set of conditionings or habits, each conditioning operates with a sense of ‘I’, for it is associated with the same sub-vocal movements, body sense and so forth, it feels as if it is the same self which is acting through these conditions.  I think that explains the feeling of a unitary self running through all our reactions and interactions between ourselves and the world.

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First, what does the illusion consist of?  Not just that it is an independent entity apart from our thoughts, feelings, emotions, efforts and the body, but also that is permanent, acting as the center of our world (i.e. the world that we put together).  Permanence and independence means not only that there is someone or something underlying these and possesses them, but also endures them.  This idea lends itself to the belief in some sort of immortality or, at any rate, an existence beyond death. Indeed, we cannot even imagine our self not being there, for in that very imagining, our sense of self is implied (like imagining presiding over our own funeral).  Suppose we didn’t have that belief, and further suppose that we will perish with our body, how does this illusion change?  Or rather, how would our life be different?

We keep accumulating money, property, fame, power and so on, not just that we are afraid of ourselves being without them, or that we are afraid of being nothing, but also that we will be needing them in some indefinite future (which extends without limit to infinity).  We keep accumulating on the basis of some sort of indefinite existence beyond the reasonable present or future.  Suppose we stop believing in our continuing into an indefinite future. Further suppose we set definite limits (5 years, 10 years 30 or 50 years).  Then how would that affect our living?  Unfortunately, that can easily be turned into a con- game we play with ourselves, because we still have a future limit at the end of which we have to conceive ourselves ending.  But we can’t!  The only possible way that could be achieved is through stopping to think about it.  That is easier said than done.

Thus it is not only not possible to think about our own ending, but it’s not possible to break up the illusion of the ego or the self through any means such as thinking.

And the fact, of course, remains that we only exist for a limited time and then we have to go.

What is not clear so far is what would a life without the illusion be like?  Accept the ending and not accumulate?

UG’s answer is that this amounts to clinical death.  We have to go, and what remains we will never know.

But who is saying this to whom?  A teacher to a listener.  Why is he saying this?  To stop the questioning.  He knows that it won’t stop with this conversation.  He would say that he has no illusion that it would.  He would say that he would only ‘sing his song and go.’  And he did.  Nothing ever changes after him.  We are stuck with ourselves.  He, however, remains fool-proof in his death!

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The idea of permanence is a relative notion:  There is the sub-vocal movement in everything we think and consciously do.  Even if there is only a collection of neurons collectively doing this activity, it is something doing this activity.  There is a neuronal movement – i.e. there is at least that kind of thinker for that moment.  In a series of such movements, more or less similar to each other or different, there is also another neuronal activity remembering these acts as one’s own acts, and positing an identity among them.  In other words, in all these thoughts, I am the common denominator.  Now, whether I think I am permanent or not, there is the identity of me, whether or not there is a neural correlate for this ‘I’. 

There is nothing absurd in thinking that the ‘I’ of yesterday is the same ‘I’ as today.  And that I prolong in time, going through changes and so on.  And yet, there is something timeless about this ‘I’.  I think we believe that in some sense or other the ‘I’ remains the same regardless of the changes it goes through.  It is just this belief, not as much that the ‘I’ is something permanent, something that underlies the fear of death and craves for immortality.  I can never believe that there really is a beginning or end to me.  I can’t conceive of it for the reason that I simply believe I am timeless. 

Although, on the one hand, I believe that life won’t last forever, although I don’t quite know when it will end.  Therefore I keep accumulating property, things and so on.  My mind cannot essentially distinguish between permanence and eternity. 

Of course, I can revert to the neurological picture of the ‘me’ and of what goes on in me, and then I might come to realize that I indeed won’t last beyond a finite time, however long that may be.  But that’s just a temporary measure.

So the illusoriness of the self is not only that the ‘I’ is something independent of my thoughts and actions, but also that it is permanent, and perhaps eternal.  This is illusory only because the permanence of the self or its identity is only relative permanence.  But what I demand from my notion of myself is absolute permanence, indeed, eternity.  We never, however, realize that the neurological facts don’t bear this out.  One might want to transfer this argument from neurology to psychology.  The result would not change.  The conditional or relative permanence is all we can have and anything else is pure conjecture and belief.

 

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[1] Indeed, the prospect for human living without the sense of the ‘I’ or the self doesn’t seem very promising.  Can we imagine a life in which we fight for our survival and self-preservation, as well as procreation, and civilization in which there is no such sense of ‘I’? Practically all the things we do and strive for are done for the survival of the psychological (so-called illusory self).  Take money making, acquisitions, building structures, making music, and mathematical or scientific achievements, for instance.  How many of these would remain if the sense of the self is gone?  I just can’t even imagine.