The “bundle of memories “.
I wanna say : Yes, habitually - But doesn’t the self also arise from the body?
What feeds the self?
What starves the self?
There are three elements in the question that needs to be clarified. What do we mean by “self” ? Is there anything sacred and what is space?
self
(sĕlf)
n. pl. selves (sĕlvz)
1. The total, essential, or particular being of a person; the individual: “An actor’s instrument is the self” (Joan Juliet Buck).
2. The essential qualities distinguishing one person from another; individuality: “He would walk a little first along the southern walls, shed his European self, fully enter this world” (Howard Kaplan).
3. One’s consciousness of one’s own being or identity; the ego: “For some of us, the self’s natural doubts are given in mesmerizing amplification by way of critics’ negative assessments of our writing” (Joyce Carol Oates).
4. One’s own interests, welfare, or advantage: thinking of self alone.
5. Immunology That which the immune system identifies as belonging to the body: tissues no longer recognized as self.
pron.
Myself, yourself, himself, or herself: a living wage for self and family.
adj.
1. Of the same character throughout.
2. Of the same material as the article with which it is used: a dress with a self belt.
3. Obsolete Same or identical.
intr.v. selfed, self·ing, selfs
To fertilize or pollinate itself. Used of hermaphroditic organisms.
[Middle English, selfsame, from Old English; see s(w)e- in Indo-European roots.]
Krishnamurti uses the above meaning.
The self is an illusion. An illusion can’t believe anything, or do anything, for that matter.
Anxiety and the desire for fulfilment.
If the self names the self ‘an illusion’, does that end the self?
One is born into and from the consciousness of self - many thousands of accumulated years of the consciousness of self. One is conditioned into and from the consciousness of self.
The actions of self are not illusions - witness war - Ukraine and Syria are not illusions.
The etymological meaning of ‘self’ is ‘One’s own person’ - ‘Same’ - ‘Very’.
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Dearest Patricia,
One has seen someone placing hisself in a position of authority stating the self is an illusion, while all the while demonstrating how his “I” had come to that understanding - demonstrating repeatedly and rather grossly - incredible for all to see - the conditioning of his “I”. What a laugh, eh? One wondered whether others had seen the hypocrisy and flagrant dishonesty of such hubris. This same person recently posted that “I am the world” is a reaction, and there was the seeing that this was, again, another patently false conclusion. This is so, because when one comes to conclude that kind of ludicrous conclusion, one is suggesting that “I am the world” is just some idea, some opinion, etc., instead of a fact, and moreover, and most importantly, a living truth - which can only be seen when there is compassion. Hence, one wonders how anyone can come to be accepted into a position of authority who utters such statements…
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laugh and…
laugh and the world
laughs with you…
cry at the state
of the world that you are
and you stand alone!
(Rocky Rhetoric BK 104)
Yes. The wrong turn for human beings seems to have been this fata morgana (mirage) - this mistaken development - of a non-functional ‘I’: that is, the identification of the brain (in early humans) with a set of memories and images that its new capacity for heightened cognising had made possible (a direct consequence of the evolution of the neocortex in the brain).
The functional ‘I’ is merely instinctual - it is a focus or centre of the body-mind that exists in all animals simply to mark itself out as a functionally separate object, to be able to survive as a discrete physical system in a world of countless other discrete physical systems.
The non-functional ‘I’ on the other hand - as has been suggested by neuroscientists among others - is a virtual reality that has come to predominate in human culture and experience, which - despite its being virtual - still serves to signal the very same network of instinctual responses that are connected to the functional ‘I’; but this time in relationship to largely non-functional abstract objects: such as
- the images our brains have formed of each other; the purely symbolic but collective constructs of language, nationality and religion; and our own private non-functional projections - in the form of desires, ideals, beliefs, wounds - which together govern our psychological life.
To ‘step away’ from this identification with the non-functional ‘I’ seems incredibly difficult for the brain, even when it is shown good evidence that its identification is based on false premises. This is probably because it has become a deeply entrenched cultural habit, passed down from one generation to the next, accumulating on its way a vast storehouse of ideas and convictions which have become its security.
This security, however (as Krishnamurti has pointed out) is fictitious, a mistake - because the non-functional ‘I’ is entirely the creation of thought, thinking. The brain has slipped-into believing the noise of its own propaganda (thought); it has taken as objective reality its own home-made subjective (virtual) reality.
To break this identification - if only for a second - is perhaps what is meant by the ‘awakening of intelligence’ (not an abstract, idealised intelligence) - maybe what the Buddhists call bodhicitta. It is a rupture in the (brain’s) identification with the movement of thought.
So: can the brain see (have an insight) that the non-functional ‘I’ it has accumulated is not - in fact - a real identity at all (but just a movement of thought and nothing more)?
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Has the self pushed the timeless through time - bringing about complete disorder in the body mind interface?
Patricia,
Inspired from:
Solitude by Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1883)
Laugh, and the world laughs with you;
Weep, and you weep alone;
For the sad old earth must borrow its mirth,
But has trouble enough of its own.
Sing, and the hills will answer;
Sigh, it is lost on the air;
The echoes bound to a joyful sound,
But shrink from voicing care.
Rejoice, and men will seek you;
Grieve, and they turn and go;
They want full measure of all your pleasure,
But they do not need your woe.
Be glad, and your friends are many;
Be sad, and you lose them all,—
There are none to decline your nectared wine,
But alone you must drink life’s gall.
Feast, and your halls are crowded;
Fast, and the world goes by.
Succeed and give, and it helps you live,
But no man can help you die.
There is room in the halls of pleasure
For a large and lordly train,
But one by one we must all file on
Through the narrow aisles of pain.
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Yes it can. Once it has seen the truth of “you are the world” and not ‘only’ the physical body, not ‘just’ the image of a self, it awakens to its infinite possibility. The self image that gave it security was never questioned until it’s falseness was pointed out. “The house is burning” is the body it had identified with.
Very nice Patricia,
here some words caming through me already some years ago:
" NOTHING…
Silence
Wonder
Movement
Ink stains the paper
Flowing together into letters
into Word for word
Declaring colour in black and white
Wonderment
Silence
NOTHING…"
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This means that the contents of the general human consciousness (‘the world’) are not different - at least in their fundamentals - from the contents of one’s own consciousness (‘you’), right?
One of those contents - a deep tap-root of the non-functional ‘I’ - is psychological suffering. Krishnamurti has said that without the complete cessation, or emptying, of that content (suffering) there can be no true compassion (compassion meaning ‘passion’ for all).
Therefore, so long as the reservoir of psychological suffering has not been drained of content, the self remains and true compassion is impossible.
So, rephrasing the earlier question, one might ask: can there be a complete end of psychological suffering in the brain (i.e. an insight into this content of human consciousness called ‘sorrow’, which has been created as a by-product of our capacity for thought)?
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Practical thought “names the self an illusion” because the evidence is that I am not who I think I am, and of course, acknowledging the illusory nature of self does not “end the self”.
I believe I exist because it is possible to practice self-deception until or unless it is untenable. Are you sure you’re not doing it?
The psychological suffering is the result of the brain/ mind’s identification with the image of itself that was inherited. When it’s pointed out that the image is an aberration and the brain realizes that it is the source of suffering, fear, etc, it looks at the world in a new way.i.e. That it Is the world. That it has no limits and no boundaries. We can’t say it’s “complete” only that in the moment, the identification with a self image or any image, is not.
Yes. But how deep is this insight of the brain’s? If it is superficial (but perhaps nevertheless genuine), we could call it a partial insight. The brain’s identification with the movement of thought has been momentarily ruptured, and a small ‘awakening’ has occurred.
But K talked about the need for a total insight. Total insight completely wipes out the ‘I’ at every level, superficial and deep (the deep being the content of human suffering). Only then - according to K - is the mind immeasurable (‘without limits or boundaries’).
Is this true for you, or a synopsis of what K-said?
We can’t say it’s “complete” only that in the moment, the identification with a self image or any image, is not.
Can one know what is “complete” without complete cessation of the capacity to be sure of oneself?