No-self VS Self

[Someone here]

In some contemporary spiritual teachings, there is a belief that the self is illusory. To become enlightened, or “realised” means to let go of the illusion of being someone. When this happens, our sense of personal identity disappears. There’s no longer a doer who performs actions; actions are just performed through us. There’s no longer an “I” who experiences things; experience just flows through us. According to these teachings, all of our problems stem from our sense of being someone, so when we let go of this idea, then our problems cease as well. 

But in my view, these teachings are based on a misunderstanding. One metaphor sometimes used to describe spiritual awakening is that of the wave and the ocean. In our normal unawakened state, we perceive ourselves as individual waves, separate to the whole ocean. But when we wake up, we realize our oneness with the ocean, that we are the ocean, that we’ve emerged from it and are always part of it. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we lose our identity as a wave. We can have an identity as a wave at the same time as being part of the ocean—at the same time as being the ocean. We can still function as individuals, with some degree of autonomy and identity, at the same time as being one with the whole universe.

One way to look at this is to see spiritual awakening not as a dissolution of self but as an expansion of self. In our sleep state, our identity is constricted, more or less confined to our own mind and body. But as we wake up, our identity opens up, expands outward. It incorporates and encompasses wider realities. It expands into other people, other living beings, the natural world, the earth itself, until eventually it encompasses the whole cosmos. In conceptual terms, this expresses itself as a movement beyond a narrow egocentric outlook (with a strong sense of group identity) toward a global, universal perspective, with a concern for overriding global issues and a sense of oneness with all human beings, irrespective of superficial differences of nationality or ethnicity.

[Tim R]

Yes, the dissolution of the finite self is the expansion/dissolution into he infinite self. Realizing no-self doesn't mean that you suddenly stop being a unique character. There's no contradiciton or misunderstanding - at least not in any of the more popular spiritual teachings. 

39 minutes ago, Someone here said:

But in my view, these teachings are based on a misunderstanding.

What teachings exactly? 

[Someone here]

6 minutes ago, Tim R said:

What teachings exactly? 

Neo-Advaita types. Like Jim Newman and Tony parsons .

If you listen to certain nonduality/Advaita teachers who are on the scene at the moment, you may get the impression that there is something terribly wrong with having a personal ‘story’. Having a thought-created story about yourself, your past experiences, your relationships, your feelings, your desires and hopes and fears, and so on – in other words, being a living, breathing human being – is a clear sign of delusion and duality. And you need to wake up from this mess!

If you go to a public meeting held by a teacher of ‘radical Advaita’, and they invite questions, and you start talking about something personal – for example, the death of a loved one, an addiction you have, a painful event that happened in your past – they will tell you that you are ‘stuck in your story’, or ‘lost in the dream of time and space’ or they will simply say you are ‘still a person’ and ‘haven’t woken up yet’. The fact that you ‘told a story’ shows that you are still coming from duality – you are still identified as a seeker, stuck in the personal. Once you ‘get it’, you will no longer tell personal stories. You will exist in the eternal Now, and know nothing of your past.

[Tim R]

There is a very, very subtle line between "denying the content of a  story and thereby believing in it" and "realizing a story to be a story and thereby dispelling the belief in it".

The latter gets rid of the reality of the story without getting rid of the story itself, the former tries to get rid of the story by denying the story itself, but without realizing the unreality of the story and thereby reinforcing/validating the illusory reality of the story - and that is definitely not a good idea, and I would agree with you on that. That would be denial and repression, which in the case of something like trauma is not what we should seek to do.

Do you know what I mean? 

 

[Someone here]

13 minutes ago, Tim R said:

There is a very, very subtle line between "denying the content of a  story and thereby believing in it" and "realizing a story to be a story and thereby dispelling the belief in it".

The latter gets rid of the reality of the story without getting rid of the story itself, the former tries to get rid of the story by denying the story itself, but without realizing the unreality of the story and thereby reinforcing/validating the illusory reality of the story - and that is definitely not a good idea, and I would agree with you on that. That would be denial and repression, which in the case of something like trauma is not what we should seek to do.

Do you know what I mean? 

 

Yes .I agree .but you need to tell that to these teachers that I'm referring to .although they are so stuck in their perspective that they will never even accept any reference to a 'personal story'.

These teachers, of course, no longer ‘tell stories’ (well, except the gigantic story that all stories are a sign of ignorance…). They imply that they themselves exist in some sort of mystical state beyond the personal, or that they have entered into a kind of space where the personal no longer has any meaning, relevance or interest. They don’t have a past or future, they don’t have ‘personal relationships’ (who is there to have a relationship with?), and they certainly never suffer (because all suffering is an illusion, right?) And so you end up feeling inferior to these people (or non-people, or nobodies, or absences, or whatever they are calling themselves today) and terribly guilty and narcissistic for still having interest in your personal story. Liberation or enlightenment obviously hasn’t happened for you yet! And so you wait and wait for liberation to happen. And although these teachers say there is nothing you can do to reach liberation, and nobody there who can do anything anyway, you carry on going to their meetings and reading their books, in the vain hope that it will happen one day. Although there’s no ‘you’ it can happen to. And no ‘one day’….

[_Archangel_]

@Someone here Theaching misunderstood. All believes, all ideas are illusory.
"Illusory" has no degrading feature, but simply means fabricated/constructed/imagined.

When the sense of idndividuality collapses, the body/mind structure still does its own thing, and that's exactly because it wans't You in the first place.
Awakening is a change of Context, that than can produce a change in Content.
 

[Seraphim]

Yes you are right. When those no-self-preachers realize the absolute, and their ego/I-thought disappear completely, they will see that "no-self" was not really a true teaching, the truth is beyond all those concepts, it cannot be put into words, it won't feel right to say "no-self" and it won't feel right to say "I am God" either, it is beyond the mind, it's beyond oneness vs separation too, which is why they prefer the expression "non-duality", it only says what something is not, not what something is.

[Terell Kirby]

Self = God = Infinity = Love = Consciousness = You

** No-Self is a popular term used by Neo Advaita followers. It really just highlights the formless nature of Self .. but still .. there is a Self.

It would be better if ‘The Selfless Self’ was used instead of ‘No-Self’. 

[Michal__]

Stripping away false self = going in the direction of realizing True Self.

[Chrisd]

I think it differs, some people report having no experience of identity and some experience their identity as having expanded to a Self. 

I don't care much about my sense of being a self, so if it's up to me I'd press delete  

[WelcometoReality]

On 2022-03-04 at 11:07 AM, Someone here said:

But in my view, these teachings are based on a misunderstanding. One metaphor sometimes used to describe spiritual awakening is that of the wave and the ocean. In our normal unawakened state, we perceive ourselves as individual waves, separate to the whole ocean. But when we wake up, we realize our oneness with the ocean, that we are the ocean, that we’ve emerged from it and are always part of it. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that we lose our identity as a wave. We can have an identity as a wave at the same time as being part of the ocean—at the same time as being the ocean. We can still function as individuals, with some degree of autonomy and identity, at the same time as being one with the whole universe.

It depends on where you awaken on the continnum. 

Most of the time there's still autonomy and identity left but at a certain point at the continuum there is no sense of doership or identity. 

On 2022-03-04 at 11:07 AM, Someone here said:

One way to look at this is to see spiritual awakening not as a dissolution of self but as an expansion of self. In our sleep state, our identity is constricted, more or less confined to our own mind and body. But as we wake up, our identity opens up, expands outward. It incorporates and encompasses wider realities. It expands into other people, other living beings, the natural world, the earth itself, until eventually it encompasses the whole cosmos. In conceptual terms, this expresses itself as a movement beyond a narrow egocentric outlook (with a strong sense of group identity) toward a global, universal perspective, with a concern for overriding global issues and a sense of oneness with all human beings, irrespective of superficial differences of nationality or ethnicity.

Yeah you could say that but the self that is coming from identification to thought and feeling is illusiory. It's not that which is expanding because it's seen to be false. Identification is the limiting factor, when there's no identification the are no longer any boundries.

[Spence94]

The Gita talks of consituents that act upon constituents. self dissolves and Self expands. What is left is not self control but is Self expansion. So wether one within Self expansion is expressing their story in some context or wether they do not is nothing more than the consituents of nature acting upon one another. In that light one teacher who claims all story is false and one who claims story is still part of the expansion of Self, are both merely consituents acting upon consituents within the expansion of Self.

Brahman allows for all scenarios. What a beautiful mystery.

Edited March 5, 2022 by Spence94