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Is the self really an illusion?
    #15963089 -

So I stumbled across this site because I posted a suicide topic on a different forum & someone sent me a message saying "once you realize that you aren't really you, your problems won't be problems anymore, they will just be thoughts that aren't really yours & you will stop suffering because you will see that you are the one who creates these "problems" by bringing them forth from your egos demand of things"

http://liberationunleashed.com/nation/index.php

You think that's true?


--------------------

No More Stories Are Told Today, I'm Sorry They Washed Away // No More Stories, The World Is Grey, I'm Tired, Let's Wash Away.


God 2 read 10932148 Unread messages

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: drkkenny] * 1
    #15963280 -

I don't really buy it. Sounds nice, but I think the whole "self is an illusion" mentality is mostly just a side-effect of drug-induced ego death. Even illusions require a subject.

If it is an illusion, it's no more an illusion than anything else. Which still means the self is at least just as real as everything else.

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: drkkenny]
    #15963311 -

I hardly see basic necessities as a demand of the ego.  Suffering is very real beyond the ego, but for many people in the modern society, yes.  I see the self more as a dynamic act of creation than an illusion.  You can change and modify your presentation to the world and perception of the world however you see fit, from a more detached perspective, to better interact with and appreciate life.  Ego/Self aside, I should hope we can agree that disease, hunger, lack of clean water, and the like are very non-illusory world issues that we absolutely have the ability to solve in the coming decades.  Unless the person is suggesting that the entire world is "illusion", including the concept of basic needs.  It's an illusion in the sense that we can use creative thinking to solve these problems, but not in the sense that they "aren't real".

Such cliche fanciful ideas can lead to delusional derealization, it's really not a beneficial philosophy to teach yourself to trust that you aren't real and your thoughts aren't your own.  Sure, we are influenced heavily by innumerable elements in life, but that doesn't mean that there's no reality to you and your thoughts.  You wouldn't have any way to come to that realization without such free will.  The important thing to take away, in my opinion, is realizing how much your thoughts influence your perceived reality, and how much various things in reality influence you.  Awareness of those elements creates a very powerful state of mind.

The dynamics of the self and reality are far more complex and mysterious than normal societal perception, but this doesn't mean that they aren't real, just that consensus perception is pretty blind. 

Edited by Pacmanpth (03/18/12 03:17 PM)

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: saintphotios]
    #15963486 -

saintphotios said:
. Even illusions require a subject.



This made me smile and laugh. That's why I enjoy the Buddhas approach so much more. Rather than there not being a self, the self is empty of some intrinsic existence. Rather than there being no self, there is no intrinsically existing self.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: Kickle]
    #15963523 -

Quote:
This made me smile and laugh.


You're very welcome.

Quote:
That's why I enjoy the Buddhas approach so much more. Rather than there not being a self, the self is empty of some intrinsic existence. Rather than there being no self, there is no intrinsically existing self.


More than what? I'm admittedly not very schooled in Buddhism. What are the implications of acknowledging the self, but denying its intrinsic existence? It seems that to talk about the self requires existence. Otherwise, we're positing "existence" as an independent trait. This was the primary criticism of Anselm's ontological argument for the existence of God. If we say that "existence" is an independent trait of a thing, then Anselm's ontological argument is sound.

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: drkkenny]
    #15963566 -

drkkenny said:
So I stumbled across this site because I posted a suicide topic on a different forum & someone sent me a message saying "once you realize that you aren't really you, your problems won't be problems anymore, they will just be thoughts that aren't really yours & you will stop suffering because you will see that you are the one who creates these "problems" by bringing them forth from your egos demand of things"

http://liberationunleashed.com/nation/index.php

You think that's true?


There is an animal body there. That's you. The rest is a story continually told. You don't have to buy it all.


--------------------
"Don't believe everything you think". -Anom.

" All that lives was born to die"-Anom.

With much wisdom comes much sorrow,
The more knowledge, the more grief.
Ecclesiastes circa 350 BC

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: saintphotios]
    #15963589 -

More than the idea of there not being a self, period. I find that the Buddha's teachings illuminate the reality much better. It isn't that there is no self, it's that the self that exists is not an intrinsically existing self.

Intrinsic here suggesting it is arising out of some independent thing.

Buddhism goes on to break down why it feels this way by asking practitioners to explore whether or not there is any independent thing for the self to arise out of in the first place. Every time that I have looked I have come up empty handed. I can't find anything that isn't dependent. And so I arrive at the conclusion that there is no independent thing out of which the self might arise. And so I agree with the Buddha in saying that the self does not intrinsically exist.

I've found there is no "me" as a property of some independent thing, which is very counter-intuitive and bizarre really. Yet at the same time this does not negate that there is a me. It is a useful technique to question our assumptions about me myself and I, and I've found Buddhism to be particularly good about spurring the questioning of assumptions.


--------------------
Why shouldn't the truth be stranger than fiction?
Fiction, after all, has to make sense. -- Mark Twain

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: drkkenny]
    #15965020 -

ice has it part right
the body is the closest to a continuum of selfness, but there is also a complex or idea of self that is very common and erroneous.

some people call that ego, others call it defense mechanisms, but it is more than that, it seems to be real because it leaves a trail in mind space.

layers and trails in time make up the illusion of self, and while ice is right in saying that the body is the self, the body supports the brain, and the brain provides this event of short term memory in which layers and intertwining trails of thought combine to produce an illusion of a defensible self.

not so much an illusion, because the trails and layers really are there, but an illusion of self, because the apparent construct of self out of these fading layers and trails is not a defensible or solid or persistent thing beyond the three to  5 minute space in time that it spans at any one moment.

so it is an illusion of a defensible self conjured out of real thoughts sensations and feelings within the short term memory process (a 3-5 minute sliding window of consciousness), there is no question that it is there, but what it is has the quality of impermanent flux - what is defensible is the body.


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: redgreenvines]
    #15965293 -

What's a self but a behaviour pattern?

The question itself is a sign of unnatural thinking/abstracting.

There is one thing only, you don't give it a name. It doesn't need to be found, or held. Just walk on...


--------------------
My solitude...
My shield...
My armour...

TESTED
WITH
FULL
FORCE

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: Icelander]
    #15965450 -

Icelander said:
drkkenny said:
So I stumbled across this site because I posted a suicide topic on a different forum & someone sent me a message saying "once you realize that you aren't really you, your problems won't be problems anymore, they will just be thoughts that aren't really yours & you will stop suffering because you will see that you are the one who creates these "problems" by bringing them forth from your egos demand of things"

http://liberationunleashed.com/nation/index.php

You think that's true?


There is an animal body there. That's you. The rest is a story continually told. You don't have to buy it all.


:awethumb:

That's why I tend to disagree a bit with certain eastern religions saying to observe thought. People then become obsessed with observing thought and yet never go past that. They're actually using thought to look at thought, its a vicious cycle. Stop being interested in thought. It's not about watching or suppressing. It's about losing interest in it, and it will fall into its natural rhythm. Ready to be used when its needed. Thought seems to always be present in the foreground for most people, after this thought falls into the background.

Edited by LSDenthusiast (03/19/12 01:07 AM)

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: circastes] * 1
    #15966517 -

circastes said:
What's a self but a behaviour pattern?

The question itself is a sign of unnatural thinking/abstracting.

There is one thing only, you don't give it a name. It doesn't need to be found, or held. Just walk on...


questioning is not unnatural
abstraction is not unnatural
it is more than a pattern or we would not be fascinated
the properties of it are engaging (magnetic as it were)
as amazing as the mystery of magnetism
do not walk on as if it were nothing.


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: drkkenny]
    #15966610 -

drkkenny said:
So I stumbled across this site because I posted a suicide topic on a different forum & someone sent me a message saying "once you realize that you aren't really you, your problems won't be problems anymore, they will just be thoughts that aren't really yours & you will stop suffering because you will see that you are the one who creates these "problems" by bringing them forth from your egos demand of things"

http://liberationunleashed.com/nation/index.php

You think that's true?


Yes and no.

"Oddly enough the paradox is one of our most valuable spiritual possessions, while uniformity of meaning is a sign of weakness. Hence a religion becomes inwardly impoverished when it loses or waters down its paradoxes; but their multiplication enriches because only the paradox comes anywhere near to comprehending the fullness of life. Non-ambiguity and non-contradiction are one-sided and thus unsuited to express the incomprehensible."
C.G.Jung, Psychology & Alchemy, collected works vol. 12

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: husmmoor]
    #15966675 -

Ego is the conditioned mind, the false self.  It is not you, it is what you are told to be by your environment/society from birth. 
Awareness of this ego mind and it's grip on your being is the path to liberation.  Still the mind and find peace beyond the drunken monkey.

The OP is good advice imo.  :waitingpatiently:

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: Hidden Woods] * 1
    #15967777 -

It's a hard thing to explain what the illusion of self is, I have an intuitive sense of it and can use words to attempt to grasp it but they always fall just short of the mark. It something you "see" as it were when your future orientated mind falls away. Everything falls into it's proper place and there is no illusion of a separate entity making an interference with what is going on, everything becomes external and the internal simply vanishes or visa versa.

It takes a few days of meditating on the subject for most to get a glimpse of this, although it's not exactly a glimpse, it's just that the analysis of the environment falls away for a split second and the gap between external and internal vanishes "everything is one", at least that's what I've seen of people who meditate on it.

It's a common idea that what we call anxiety or suffering is not fear but "separation anxiety". For instance let's say a human is in a rage state, there's a gap between the state and the internal chatter, so the voice is giving an overlap of that situation contrary to the actual situation and attempts to alter it, creating a divide between the action and the perception of it, in time these perceptions layer and become continually reinforced (this is "the self" = "what we think over time"), causing anxiety and an even more conflated self image.


--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: Grapefruit]
    #15968099 -

Maybe the problem with describing the "illusion of self" is due to the vagueness of it in the first place. Has anyone really broken down exactly what you mean when you say the self is an illusion?

If someone says that the pond in the desert is an illusion... what they're saying is that the visual perception of a pond does not correspond to a physical body of water. However, the visual perception of the pond is very real. Whatever its cause may be -- whether it's an actual pond or simply the refraction of light mixed with a bit of hallucination -- the visual perception is nonetheless real.

I'll try to leave metaphysics and dualism out of this for the time being... just to prevent sidetracking. But when I talk about myself, I'm ultimately referring to my physical body. But more importantly, I'm referring to the subjective experience that is unique to my physical body. I look outward at other bodies and I communicate with them, and I have this mental storage of many subjective experiences like this over the course of the individual life of this particular body and this particular brain which produces those subjective experiences.

So to deny the self is to deny your own subjective experience. Even more problematic, if we acknowledge that there is in fact an illusion of a self, but not an actual self, what traits does this nonexistent "actual self" have that our admitted illusory self lacks? What would we have to add to this illusion to make it actual? And even worse yet... the perception of illusions are nonetheless real. So what is perceiving this illusory self? It would have to that very illusory self, no? This is completely circular. I'm fairly convinced that science has no means of accounting for subjective experience(feel free to show me otherwise)... and it's for this reason that some tend to therefore deny it as illusory. But this allegiance to the universal authority of science to account for all real things leads us to take something like subjective experience, which is more obvious to us than the reliability of any sense perception, and discount it as illusory. I think it's irrational nonsense.

Edited by saintphotios (03/19/12 06:32 PM)

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: saintphotios]
    #15968342 -

Quote:
So to deny the self is to deny your own subjective experience.


I think your language here implies a divide between subjective experience and self, as if there is another you that looks at it; a reference point, other than a physical entity there is nothing that possesses the experience, the experience is just another object, not fundamentally different from a rock or anything else. The illusion of self IMO is the illusion that there is a fundamental difference between subjective experience and any other object. It doesn't deny subjective experience, only that there is an internal container separate from the universe as a whole.

The "I"ing activity is just another object, a facet that the organism uses to relate to the world and function within it, but it's just a behaviour.


--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: saintphotios]
    #15968352 -

that experiencing thing exists.
the illusion is to imagine it is other than a fleeting shadow or fading footprint in an ocean of experiencing.


--------------------
:brainfart: _ :finger:

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: Kickle]
    #15968438 -

Kickle said:
More than the idea of there not being a self, period. I find that the Buddha's teachings illuminate the reality much better. It isn't that there is no self, it's that the self that exists is not an intrinsically existing self.

Intrinsic here suggesting it is arising out of some independent thing.

Buddhism goes on to break down why it feels this way by asking practitioners to explore whether or not there is any independent thing for the self to arise out of in the first place. Every time that I have looked I have come up empty handed. I can't find anything that isn't dependent. And so I arrive at the conclusion that there is no independent thing out of which the self might arise. And so I agree with the Buddha in saying that the self does not intrinsically exist.

I've found there is no "me" as a property of some independent thing, which is very counter-intuitive and bizarre really. Yet at the same time this does not negate that there is a me. It is a useful technique to question our assumptions about me myself and I, and I've found Buddhism to be particularly good about spurring the questioning of assumptions.


I like the cut of your jib, I hadn't known that much about Buddha but I agree whole heartedly with the idea you're putting forth.
I have a hard time thinking of a reason why we above all else would arise out of something that does not follow physical law, as has everything we've ever seen has in the past.
If the brain didn't need this self to navigate such an intricate three-dimensional realm I doubt I would be here in the first place, but since this is a mutual relationship we have here
Brain even has the courtesy to put me under for a third of the day so I don't go insane and we don't die. :smirk:

I'd guess the human body is another of the many complex energy systems finding equilibrium before our very eyes, and we happen to be caught with front row seats for the show as we watch the universe pass by for a brief moment in time.

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: redgreenvines]
    #15968449 -



--------------------
Little left in the way of energy; or the way of love, yet happy to entertain myself playing mental games with the rest of you freaks until the rivers run backwards. 

"Chat your fraff
Chat your fraff
Just chat your fraff
Chat your fraff"

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Re: Is the self really an illusion? [Re: redgreenvines]
    #15968581 -

I hold the whole idea of the self being an illusion. I try to avoid the thoughts of what "makes me, me" (being the ego an all that).
Ego is a major problem with society, too many people with their flawed opinions, because they desperately need to have an opinion, they need to be "RIGHT"(but that's just my opinion, ha!)

It would be a good start to stop caring about what other people think about you. That's the No.1 inhibition that stops people from being able to truly bloom: fear. Fear is the mindkiller.
It is altogether another thing when you see people (and usually hear them) who "don't give a fuck what people think about them" - however, that is EXACTLY what they want people to think about them (Thankyou, Game of Thrones). It's still a projection of the ego instead of an unhindered experience. You can pinpoint the ego between those lines. That is what most people seem to mean when they say the "self", but that is, altogether, different.

The self is the conscious or unconscious being that is. The spark of life, a piece of creation. The Soul, if you will. Your body is one part of that, this physical existence...exists, but it is not all that exists

The holographic principle suggests (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_principle) that what we experience now is just a 3D representation of things happening elsewhere.

Even the way hallucinogens affect the mind suggest some things about this "reality" - Serotonin blocks reality by regulating the firing of neurons so that they don't work too fast or process too much information. Psilocybin allows your brain to process all the information that it is fed from all sources, without regulation or limitation by serotonin.

So in a way, it's actually more real than when you aren't tripping. And yet...get this, you're "hallucinating", seeing things that "aren't real".

Reality is subjective, relative to the individual.
"One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter" an all that.

It's all real, everything's real it just doesn't matter in the way that you think it does. Because in the same way....it's an illusion.

Read: The Middle Pillar by Israel Regardie
Watch: The Esoteric Agenda by Ben Stewart

I must admit that I'm 100% stuck in duality instead of "reality". It's hard for me to not question what's real.

QUESTION EVERYTHING.


--------------------
My happiest thought, which allows me to fly,
Is of Tinkerbell naked and sucking me dry
My First Grow

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