“Fantasies” take away real lives
In my opinion, many would agree that the last few years have been evidence of the madness that has engulfed the bulk of humanity, regardless of its social status: from the elite to the bottom. You can attribute everything to the fact that man is simply an animal, driven by emotions and cognitive distortions. However, I am convinced that this can be largely corrected if we pay attention to such a phenomenon as the dualism of perception, or, in other words, the illusion of the “inner self.”
Content
What is the “inner self”?
Why is it harmful to have dualism of perception?
The One Who Was Never Really Born
The one who cannot decide to die
The one who cannot exist
One who cannot be within himself
What's next?
What is the “inner self”
Before we begin to discuss the illusory nature of the “inner self,” it is important to define what exactly we mean by this concept. Often words such as “consciousness”, “mind”, “personality”, “inner self” are used as synonyms for one phenomenon. In my opinion – it's not right to do that and it is worth separating these concepts:
It would be strange to say that consciousness is an illusion, because our mind clearly has a “special” part that is noticeably different from ordinary reflexes. Consciousness has a focus of attention and is actively involved when we learn something new.
It would be strange to say that personality is an illusion, if by personality we mean the characteristics of a person. People are not the same. There are differences.
It would be strange to say that the mind is an illusion. Any living creature is noticeably different from a stone.
Unlike “consciousness”, “mind” and “personality”, our “inner self” is an object of perception – a fictional character that we consider to be ourselves. This phenomenon is not much different from a tulpa, an imaginary friend, or from fantasy when we imagine ourselves as a character in a book, such as Harry Potter. The main difference between our “I” and fantasy is that such “fantasizing” usually occurs involuntarily and is part of the perception of the world: it seems to us that the “I” exists for the present, that it is real, and that it truly suffers because “real” reasons.
Now that we have decided what the “inner self” is, it is worth asking the question: can we do without it?
Why is having dualism of perception harmful?
Unfortunately, the topic of non-dualistic perception is mainly the domain of various “spiritual” teachings, which automatically makes this topic marginal. Therefore, it turns out to be a funny situation that the scientific world is in no particular hurry to expose this illusion. Many people even consider aging to be a disease, but they don’t see the presence of a certain “I” in themselves as something strange, but they fantasize about how they will transfer this mythical creature into a computer.
It will not be possible to go to the same psychotherapy to recover from this “hallucination”. You won’t be able to complain to someone that you are imagining a certain “I” that you consider to be your real self. No one from the world of science can help you on this topic. Well, as for the “spiritual” world, with a 99.9% probability you will fall for an “infogypsy” or go crazy, hanging yourself with trinkets and listening to various gurus. Alas, this is basically a “path less traveled” (it turns out there are still such things in the 21st century). Everything that concerns the inner “I” is currently at the stage of the “Middle Ages” and there is essentially no normal research on this topic yet.
Usually the advantage of not having a division into “I” and “Not I” is known not only to everyone because of the difficulty of experiencing this state. However, special cases of partial disappearance of dualistic perception are already more widely known and people experience them more often. For example, the so-called “flow state”, when you can “automatically” improvise, draw, do housework, play sports and do much more, is essentially a partial disappearance of the division into “I” and “Not I”. Another special case is the ability to read “without reading,” without words in your head, immediately grasping the meaning of what you read. The partial disappearance of the division into “I” and “Not I” is familiar to many, it’s just that it is not usually interpreted that way.
I myself once had a very vivid experience, it was also the very first, when, after trying to stop the internal dialogue, not only the vocalization of thoughts, but also the feeling of “I” disappeared. Then the world for me ceased to be divided into “I” and “Not I,” and this lasted for two whole hours (approximately).
During the absence of separation into “I” and “Not I,” I did not lose the ability to understand my name and the boundaries of the body. So I can confidently say that all the skills that we traditionally attribute to the “I” have nothing to do with the illusion of “I” and will work without schizophrenia dualism of self-perception.
Our “I” is needed for another – this protection from negative experiences. It is an illusion that distorts the perception of reality in such a way that reality is perceived as “more pleasant.” At the same time, you can live without distortion, since this defense is simply a “childish” way of coping with problems without solving them. In adult life, this “skill” of escapism in fantasy during a “fire” is more harmful than useful, and carries more disadvantages than advantages.
What do we lose and what problems do we have when we are in dualistic perception:
The presence of “I” makes impossible being in a “flow state”, which greatly reduces your productivity. Moreover, we are talking not only about the “state of flow” while using well-learned skills, but also during thinking (thoughts “without words”), during a dialogue with another person, reading “without words” and much more.
Presence of “I” Always implies the presence of a role. This creates an analogue of “destiny”, which you would hardly like to have, but which you yourself strive for. Why should you watch the “series” of your life, the plot of which you cannot influence and are only forced to endure? All “I” roles are needed for escapism from experiences, without exception. Therefore, absolutely any roles do not imply a way out of them, because they were originally created for someone else. As a result, years of life are wasted in search of “oneself”, a suitable partner, “mistakes” in the same business due to self-harm, low self-esteem and other delights of roles. This very significant minus. This is a very big price to pay for escapism from hidden experiences that would be easier to experience in several stages than to run from them for years.
The presence of the “I” creates restrictions in terms of the ability to experience feelings and emotions, since the “I” is a division of the psyche into two parts. All the worst things are placed in the character or object of the “Not Me” psyche, but at the same time the ability to perceive the world brightly and enjoy life is lost, because the source of positive feelings is located in the same place as the source of negative ones. As a result, if in childhood you still experienced a sense of novelty, then already at 18 it may disappear, and by 40 you can lose any brightness of perception.
The presence of the “I” creates a “blindness” of perception, where some emotionally charged topics are avoided through the presence of specific ideas about reality. For example, this could be a belief in the supernatural or, conversely, pronounced atheism. This may be the opinion that the Americans did not fly to the moon, if it is very important for a person. It could even be a fight with the “Ego” (
author of the article, finish it). Absolutely anything can become escapism. And this makes a person insane in a particular area, no matter how high his IQ is.
The One Who Was Never Really Born
Let us finally move on to examples of exposing the “I”.
So, when a person was born, he had a body, parents, a roof over his head. Then your name, friends and more will appear.
However, if we can say that a person “appeared” body, parents and so on, then this means that before birth there was already “someone”who then acquires it all. Otherwise who has it? “appeared”?
But this is impossible, because before birth there was no human being yet. And if there was no one before birth, then who then acquires a body, parents, a roof over his head, a name and friends?
Everything is solved very simply – in fact the concept of “mine” does not existit’s just a feeling that arises as a consequence of dualism – the division into “mine” and “not mine”, into “I” and “Not I”.
In general, it is obvious – we will not find this phenomenon anywhere in matter itself, even if we study it with the help of the LHC. It is not written on the atoms that they are someone else's.
Why do we need the feeling of “mine”? This feeling makes objects special: “My” name, “My” jacket on my body, “My” parents, “My” phone – now all these objects have become special compared to the rest – they give a certain feeling of comfort of being. But the truth is that they simply exist. Even parents are just people. And even you yourself are just a person, of whom there are millions.
What happens if there are no longer special objects of perception in the world? What will happen if you get out of the metro not at “your” station, but at an ordinary, “nobody’s” station, and then go along an ordinary street, and not your “native” one, dressed in an ordinary jacket, and not in “yours,” and having an ordinary body, and not “your own”?
What if we were just born, and there were hundreds of thousands of such new people that year? What if the birth process had nothing to do with us? What if we live life not because we chose it? What if there are no alternative options that seem real to us?
What if our life and the flow of the same river have much more in common? What if in both cases there is “no one” behind the phenomenon? What if all of this “just happens” and that no one actually chose to be born because there never was, is not, and never will be an “author of life” within us?
What if the wind blows, the sun shines, the river flows not because there is “someone” in these phenomena who chose it? What if and we, too – just a phenomenon?
Maybe we need to feel the specialness of ourselves and everything connected with us, simply because otherwise life is scary?
This is worth paying attention to. This issue is resolved through removing the fear of reality. This fear is a part of us, and not something separate. Therefore, it is quite possible to make friends with him and no longer go into fantasy, where reality is sweet to us only because it contains obviously impossible things, but which give us the illusion of control, the presence of an alternative fantasy choice.
The one who cannot decide to die
I assume that many people are familiar with the desire to die: when there are many problems in life, the prospect of becoming “nothing” begins to attract long-awaited relief.
And this is also an illusion, because to feel relief due to loss of life, will need to continue to exist at least in some form after one’s own death, which is impossible. There will be no one to experience relief after death.
The anticipation of relief arises because we invent a new role for ourselves in the form of “emptiness” and put ourselves in its place. This is about the same as imagining yourself as Harry Potter, only in this case the role is more abstract. Since the “emptiness” has nothing – no body, no problems, we have an emotional reaction to this role in the form of anticipation of long-awaited relief.
It’s funny, but even if a person is a hardened atheist and materialist, he will still be subject to this illusion, as if he believes in an afterlife. This happens due to the lack of a critical position in relation to one’s own feelings. Emotions are the engine of our motivations, so it is always worth considering the reason for their occurrence, and not blindly believing in what you imagine.
Thus we cannot choose “not to live,” just as we could not choose “life” itself and ourselves initially. The very idea that there is someone within us who can choose life or death implies the separation of this “I” from life, from the body.
Life does not depend on us. We just live, just like the wind just blows, and not because it wanted to.
The one who cannot exist
It's funny, but the thought of one's own existence makes no sense.
The fact is that another experience when we could be aware of our own non-existence is is simply impossible purely physically.
The very idea that “I exist”implies the possibility of a variant of experience “I dont exist”, which is impossible. Therefore the option “I exist” is also a fiction.
How are such illusions possible when we experience our “I” as if it were real? It's simple: what we perceive in ourselves as “I” is not the same as ourselves. Our “I” is just an image, just a fictional character that we play. And the main property of the character “I” is that he always has a “pair” in the form of an object “Not I”. Therefore, it is worth paying attention to both characters in yourself – they do not exist separately.
One who cannot be within himself
In general, the illusion of “I” is reminiscent of Russell's paradox.
The essence of Russell's paradox is that a set cannot contain itself. Using the example of a physical object, this paradox can be represented as a box that is placed inside itself. For this reason, our “I” simply cannot be the real person we think it is.
Moreover: within the sensory experience of consciousness there is simply not and never has been anything else other than the sensory experience of consciousness. This means that we have never really dealt with the real division into “I” and “Not I” and literally everything that is inside us is us. And since we are no longer given anything other than our consciousness, then there is no point in talking about consciousness itself either: there is no point in looking for “yourself” because no one has ever had the real experience of not being yourself.
What's next?
There will be a continuation of the article on a similar topic. In the meantime, it is interesting to look at the reaction of readers and understand what raises the most questions in order to understand what to write an article about next.
Here I would like to note that in itself, a way out of dualistic perception will most likely not be enough, although this is already an essentially impossible task: most people, out of fear of exposing their “I,” will deny any arguments, any knowledge.
But even if we assume that a miracle happened, research was conducted, simple and effective ways to solve this problem were found, this hardly means that the majority of people who, before the transition to a new perception, followed social norms only out of fear of punishment, will begin to behave normally. For them, the myth that there is no “parent” or “God” is more likely to be exposed.
Therefore, the transition in itself will apparently not be enough. People need a new vision of the world, based on the absence of division into “I” and “Not I”. This is a new worldview, such as open individualismwill allow society to move from self-regulation based on fear of punishment to the understanding that since there is no “I”, then it is not so important who exactly suffers and who is happy, because it all exists simultaneously.
From the illusory nature of the “I,” it turns out that all the suffering and all the happiness of living beings are presented in reality simultaneously. In general, this is the expected conclusion if we start from materialism, and not from the concept of “uniqueness” (and therefore separation) of the soul or “I”. After all, if we recognize the independence of reality, that it does not disappear behind our backs, then it means that the feelings of other living beings also do not disappear because we do not feel them within ourselves.
This is a very important point because it allows morality to be based on rational premises, and not on myths about punishment after death or on the importance of observing rules in front of a super being. A concept will appear that is very similar to “karma,” but which does something bad not sometime later, but at the moment when you hurt someone else.
There is no “I”, therefore it is then impossible to compare oneself in the present moment with oneself in the past. Literally every moment we seem to be born again and disappear. Every moment we have a new experience. The idea that it can somehow be compared with the “past self”, finding “the same self” in it, is illusory. Therefore, it makes no difference who exactly will suffer and who will be happy: these states will exist simultaneously. We simply replace the concepts of “existence” and our own assessment in sensory experience, as if they are not materialists at all.
If you look at reality, now everything is extremely sad – people, being in fantasies that they are supposedly part of something larger, and they have some kind of enemy, are ready to literally kill each other. For what? In essence, it’s the same as if someone in a mental hospital imagines that he is Napoleon. It’s just that people’s roles are usually not so ambitious.
In fact, humanity has long had no real reasons for conflict. There are only imaginary ones. And this imagination may one day cost us a destroyed ecology, a destroyed economy, and maybe even the complete destruction of all life on Earth. It's time to call it a day.
