Recently I was scrolling through old pictures and I found
the picture from when I was a little kid.
I took the picture and held it up to my
face in front of a mirror and I realised,
wow, I look nothing like that kid in the picture.
We don't have the same physical properties,
our thoughts, ideas and beliefs are different
and we certainly don't have the same memories.
But still, I know it's me.
My brain sees the picture and creates a storyline that
I was there,
I am here, and I'll be somewhere else in the
future,
looking back, doing the same exact thing.
This is the idea of self,
the idea that there's something deep within us that remains
fundamentally the same even when everything else changes.
It's the idea that we can grow bigger,
create new memories, lose old memories,
change our thoughts and beliefs,
but deep down there's still something that remains fundamentally unchanged.
The idea of self is one has baffled pretty much
everyone,
scientists and philosophers alike, for centuries.
Because as easy as it is to describe,
understanding why or how it works sits on the opposite
end of the spectrum.
As humans, we experience a lot of different senses.
We feel things, we see things,
and we hear things. We have thoughts,
we have feelings, and we have the ability to learn
new things.
But all of these things are separate experiences,
So at what point do all of these sentient properties
become
you?
As I continued scrolling through the photos,
I came across pictures from elementary,
middle school, high school, and everything after
all of these photos looked completely different.
When I think back to those times and the decisions
I made,
I would never make most of them right now.
Yet, without a shadow of a doubt,
my brain convinces me that I am still me.
The words I and me are more than just pronouns.
They are the two ways we describe self.
When we say I, we talk about a being who
is consciously aware of the present moment.
So I am reading this line on the script right
now.
On the other hand, when we describe self using the
word me,
we're usually referring to a personal identity.
Who we think we are.
Me usually reflects who we are through the lenses of
our past,
present and plans for the future.
But we colour our memories based on what we need
to be in the present and our plans for the
future are always changing.
How can there be a consistent being if everything that
forms it changes?
We like to think of memories as simply playing back
a video in our head of what happened in the
past.
But that's not what memories are.
Memories are our brains reconstruction of the past experiences.
We create these memories to fit the present narrative based
on what we know now,
how we describe me now,
as well as our present needs and goals.
So if you now think of yourself as a kind
person,
you're more likely to remember all the times you've been
kind to people rather than the times you've been unkind.
We form narratives about ourselves around how we want to
be seen by others.
We convince ourselves that we'll act and behave a certain
way to fit that narrative,
even when we're often mistaken.
If this is true, and we can't trust our memories
to give an accurate description of who we were in
the past,
then how can we have a self that exists through
time?
Aren't we just creating new selves every time this narrative
completely changes?
Think about it. It's not that the narrative continues down
a different path.
It changes completely such that what was no longer is.
And if what was can no longer be,
then we cannot say that there is a self that
persists through time.
Rather, the idea of self is one that is constantly
recreated by our brains when the need arises.
This is what we refer to as the illusion of
self.
Contrary to what you might be thinking,
this does not mean that we don't have a self.
It simply means that it does not exist the way
we think it does.
Our bodies are made-up of a bundle of perceptions,
sensations, and thoughts. Our brains try to make sense of
the randomized nature of our being by creating a linear
storyline.
You were there, now you're here.
It is this storyline of sorts that we describe as
self.
It's just the brain's way of making sense of the
randomness that is human existence.
This is why the idea of self that we have
now cannot be true.
What most people think of a self,
they think of something that can exist outside of the
brain,
but that's just not possible.
The self is a sensation of continuity and unity of
self that is created by the brain.
Anything other than this is just wishful thinking that humans
are more than just a sentient bunch of molecules.
The idea that deep down we have a soul in
immaterial essence,
the driving force of individual existence.
And in most religions of the world
this is true, but not Buddhism.
Anata is the Buddhist doctrine that teaches against the idea
of a self.
It teaches that there's no underlying permanent substance,
there's no soul. Rather, everything we experience is simply perceived
by our senses,
not by I or me.
It teaches that since there is no I,
material wealth can't belong to me,
so we shouldn't crave these things or hold on to
them like they're worth more than just a few good
sensations.
Dropping all the other pictures I was flipping through,
I picked up the picture from when I was a
kid again.
I held it in front of my face and stared
at the mirror again.
And as the existential crisis flooded my mind,
I couldn't help but ask,
if I wasn't told that that was me,
Would I have known? If I had seen this picture
randomly without any context,
would I have been able to tell that it was
me?
Definitely not. So then, how can I say that there's
a self that existed in that kid that still exists
in me?
How can I say our experiences are linear,
That we're the same person?
The truth is, you're not the same person that existed
before,
and you're not the same person that will exist in
the future.
Or at least, there's no evidence to prove it.
This thought is both terrifying and exciting.
It's terrifying because it's fundamentally against everything we know about
ourselves.
If there's no self, then there's no self will,
and if there's no self will,
there's no morality. There's no right or wrong,
good or evil, just a bunch of molecules interacting to
the stimuli they're presented with.
But on the other hand,
it is exciting because it liberates you.
Now you don't have to think it's me against the
world
because there is no you to begin with.
You'll no longer think life is unfair because bad things
happen to you.
You'll see bad things happening to you simply as things
just happening.
Whether it's good or bad,
it doesn't really matter, does it?
You'll no longer be scared of death
because nothing can die that never was.
You'll understand that death is simply a natural occurrence.
The illusion of self is one of the most powerful
and consistent illusions we experience.
It's there right from when we're toddlers up until the
day we die.
If it isn't real, then why do our brains create
these storylines?
Why does this illusion exist?
As living things, our goal is to survive and thrive.
We learn, adapt, we grow,
and one of the most important building blocks of survival
is competition.
Without competition, we'll all be satisfied with where we are
and have no desire to strive for anything at all.
Without the illusion of self,
there is no competition. Competition is built on the idea
of a single entity outdoing another.
If there is no single entity in just sentient chemical
reactions,
there will be no competition.
And without competition, things just don't really work the way
they do.
Now,
if you're still not convinced that the need for competition
alone is the reason our brains make up the idea
of a unified and persistent being in all of us,
you're not alone. Not everyone believes in the idea of
a lack of self.
Some people who meditate and sometimes get to a state
of complete quietness and emptiness,
described as a pure consciousness event.
This is an empty state of consciousness.
There are no thoughts, no technical mental processes going,
just a deep seated sense of eyeness,
an independent identity. Many people use this state as an
argument for the existence of self,
but there are two things wrong with the school of
thought.
One, there is no scientific evidence to back it up.
We cannot determine what is what simply by judging based
on people's personal experiences,
unfortunately. 2 The feeling of emptiness is a mental process.
That in itself is your brain telling you that you're
free of thoughts.
It's still a brain activity.
Some people argue that if there is no self,
then how can we trust the judgements of anyone?
If a ghost came out today to tell us that
there are no ghosts,
how do we believe them?
For you to be able to pass judgement on consciousness,
you need to be an objective observer.
But being an objective observer means you need to have
a self who observes all like you're a God or
something.
So then negates almost every argument you're trying to defend.
But in truth, the illusion of self is not a
ghost telling us that there are no ghosts.
It's a figure that we call a ghost,
telling us that they can feel,
touch, and smell. They can interact with living things,
so they cannot be ghosts.
It's not just postulating the absence of a self,
it's showing the reality of its absence through scientific research.
We don't need a self to tell us there is
no self.
We only need the evidence,
and the evidence is clear.
When I hold up the picture of when I was
a kid to my face,
it's clear that everything has changed.
I know I am still causally related to who that
kid was,
but there is no evidence to prove that there's something
in that kid that is still in me that has
persisted through time.
At this point, I was having an existential crisis,
so I put down my own pictures and picked up
the pictures of my grandma.
She's much older now. She doesn't really speak much,
but she still talks. She still remembers what the world
was like when she was younger.
But what about people her age who suffer from advanced
Alzheimer's?
People who can't recognize their own loved ones,
who can't remember anything from the past,
do they still have a self?
When does a person stop being a self?
If you no longer have any memories of the past
or plans for the future,
what then is self? What does the word me refer
to?
If the very components that make the self can easily
be altered or wiped away completely,
then the idea of a persistent existence through time is
not possible.
Only when we disregard the idea of self can we
begin to understand why people seem to go completely off
script.
We often judge people by the idea of them we've
created in our head,
when in reality we're all just a bunch of competing
impulses and urges swaying US1 way and then the other.
The idea that there is no self that exists through
time explains why we sometimes act in ways that are
inconsistent with the story we tell both to ourselves
and to others. The truth is,
the illusion of self is simply a collection of our
memories of the past,
desires in the present, and plans for the future.
It's our psychological profile. It's not a supernatural entity that
exists independently.
It does not transcend death.
It does not exist through time.
We were not, and we won't be.
We simply are.
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Having a sense of self is important.
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