Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self

Just as predicted, I'm really enjoying reading Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion."

I'm about a third of the way through. Which is far enough to have discovered the central theme. Harris writes:

My goal in this chapter and the next is to convince you that the conventional sense of self is an illusion -- and that spirituality largely consists in realizing this, moment to moment.

...Most of us feel that our experience of the world refers back to a self -- not to our bodies precisely but to a center of consciousness that exists somehow interior to the body behind the eyes, inside the head.

The feeling that we call "I" seems to define our point of view in every moment, and it also provides an anchor for popular beliefs about souls and freedom of will.

And yet this feeling, however imperturbable it may appear at present, can be altered, interrupted, or entirely abolished. 

...Subjectively speaking, the only thing that actually exists is consciousness and its contents.

Wow. 

Now, I realize that some people would say "Yeah, makes sense, no big surprise" to the above scientifically- and experientially-persuasive truths.

But I spent decades as a devotee of a mystical philosophy that, like many others, taught that we humans have, or are, an eternal soul. The soul supposedly could return to God through meditation at the "eye center" -- that place behind the eyes and inside the head Harris, a neuroscientist and Buddhist practitioner, says doesn't house a self or soul.

So it sure seems like those who claim that this world is an illusion, with soul-realms being true reality, are the ones who have gotten it wrong. 

There is no enduring soul or self to be liberated. As Harris says in his book, genuine spirituality is realizing this. Thus a belief in the existence of soul leads one farther away from the truth, not closer. This is basic Buddhism, yet even many Buddhists still harbor fantasies of living on after death as... something or other.

I'll share more from "Waking Up" in other posts. So far, I can highly recommend the book. Harris has a knack for saying familiar things (to those, like me, who have read similar books) in a fresh way. 

For example, I've read most of Derek Parfit's "Reasons and Persons." A Wikipedia article describes a Parfit thought experiment.

At time 1, there is a person. At a later time 2, there is a person. These people seem to be the same person. Indeed, these people share memories and personality traits. But there are no further facts in the world that make them the same person.

Parfit's argument for this position relies on our intuitions regarding thought experiments such as teleportation, the fission and fusion of persons, gradual replacement of the matter in one's brain, gradual alteration of one's psychology, and so on.

For example, Parfit asks the reader to imagine entering a "teletransporter," a machine that puts you to sleep, then destroys you, breaking you down into atoms, copying the information and relaying it to Mars at the speed of light.

On Mars, another machine re-creates you (from local stores of carbon, hydrogen, and so on), each atom in exactly the same relative position. Parfit poses the question of whether or not the teletransporter is a method of travel—is the person on Mars the same person as the person who entered the teletransporter on Earth?

Certainly, your replica on Mars would remember being you, would remember entering the teletransporter in order to travel to Mars. Part of the problem here is that the teletransporter on Earth doesn't have to destroy the person who enters it, but instead can simply make infinite replicas, all of whom would claim to remember entering the teletransporter on Earth in the first place.

Using thought experiments such as these, Parfit argues that any criteria we attempt to use to determine sameness of person will be lacking, because there is no further fact. What matters, to Parfit, is simply "Relation R," psychological connectedness, including memory, personality, and so on.

Harris describes the thought experiment in a similar, though somewhat different, way. In his variation, the copy of you is transported to Mars, while the "real" you awaits confirmation that the duplication is complete before being destroyed. Harris then writes:

To most readers, this thought experiment will suggest that psychological continuity -- the mere maintenance of one's memories, beliefs, habits, and other mental traits -- is an insufficent basis for personal identity. It's not enough for someone else on Mars to be just like you; he must actually be you. 

The man on Mars will share all your memories and will behave exactly as you would have. But he is not you -- as your continued existence in the teleportation chamber on Earth attests.

To the Earth-you awaiting obliteration, teleportation as a means of travel will appear a horrifying sham: You never left Earth and are about to die. Your friends, you now realize, have been repeatedly copied and killed.

And yet, the problem with teleportation is somehow not obvious if a person is disassembled before his replica is built. In that case, it is tempting to say that teleportation works and that "he" is really stepping onto the surface of Mars.

...Parfit believes that we should view the teleportation case in which a person is destroyed before being replicated as more or less indistinguishable from the normal pattern of personal survival throughout our lives. 

After all, in what way are you subjectively the same as the person who first picked up this book? In the only way you can be: by displaying some degree of psychological continuity with that past self. Viewed in this way, it is difficult to see how teleportation is any different from the mere passage of time.

...Parfit's view of the self, which he appears to have arrived at independently through an immensely creative use of thought experiments, is essentially the same as the one found in the teachings of Buddhism: There is no stable self that is carried along from one moment to the next.

Far from being scary, this is a big relief. The self or soul religious people believe needs saving... it doesn't exist. 

The egotistical belief that an immaterial "I" will endure forever while everything else in the physical world will change and die... it isn't true. 

We can relax into reality.

The world is us and we are the world. Yes, there is something it is like to be a conscious part of the world called "me." However, I, and you, and everybody are ever-changing aspects of the world, not an eternal soul-drop destined to return to a godly ocean. 

Whateven heaven might be, it is right here, right now.

Comments

[tucson]

When I am wound up in a sense of self, me or I, this is when I am a soul drop, a separate entity that has a problem of existence or non-existence, of death.

Other times "I" seem not to exist. There is just the driving of the car, the walking on the trail, the hearing people talk, the words emitting from this mouth, the seeing of the houses, trees and bugs, the lifting of the shovel, the smell of diesel exhaust. Life is what I am and my head has no boundaries. Maybe in these moments the drop has merged into the ocean. I don't know. In these moments death has no meaning, or life either other than the present living of it. Where would I go at death other than right here wherever that may be, where it has been all along.

[cc]

...my head has no boundaries.

The brain is just an organ. It has its limits.

Where would I go at death other than right here wherever that may be, where it has been all along.

You haven't been here "all along" because you didn't exist until your parents conceived you. When you die, you won't "go" anywhere or remain "right here" because you will have ceased to exist.

[observer]

Meh to all of the above lol. Maybe we are living in a virtual reality, a kind of massive computer simulation and every now and then theres a glitch and we experience deja vu or we witness some kind of unnatural phenomena which doesn't make sense enough for the brain to decipher.

Some scientists say that just like in The Matrix we may too be living in a simulation generated by an all powerful computer.

So, who is running the computer in charge of this massive experiment where we find ourselves stuck in a kind of web where we are suffering from amnesia and have to be programmed from the moment we are born to be able to function here on this little rock spinning through space in a vast physical universe.

Maybe super intelligent highly advanced extra terrestrials, or maybe inter-dimensional entities, or just to make it simple we could call it Kal who is running the show.

[Bob]

So all the Shamans, Mystics, and Sages today and yesterday have it all wrong about life beyond the physical world or may I say in addition to it??

All experiences of Shamanic journeying and Mystical flight in meditation or within the dream state are just pure fantasy and illusion??

So, what makes Sam Harris or anyone else so certain that all such experiences are illusions. How can anyone say with absolute certainty that nothings exists beyond the physical? Who really knows for sure.

I can support what Tuscon says - that there is a certain aspect of consciousness that one may experience that is beyond the normal confines of ego consciousness. What that is or who it is that experiences this I have no clue. But, I understand what Tuscon has experienced.

[tucson]

The brain is a locus of assemblage, a neuron or cell in the greater mind of the universe that percolates endless cells or loci in a sort of cosmic head of beer each bubble forming and bursting returning to its source.

Of course what fundamentally I am (beer) has been here all along, otherwise my existence would have never arrived.

Infinity goes both ways you know. When did time begin as a launching point so that anything could ever appear?

[cc]

Maybe we are living in a virtual reality

Maybe if you were more interested in what you can actually find out you wouldn't have to entertain yourself with fanciful notions.

When did time begin as a launching point so that anything could ever appear?

For tucson, time began when his parents conceived him.

How can anyone say with absolute certainty that nothings exists beyond the physical?

Religion pretends to know what "exists beyond the physical", and science admits to knowing only what it can detect and measure, so how can you be so confused?

[tucson]

Regarding time and notions of duration and origins, scientists seem to like the 'big bang' explanation for existence. They see all the movement and expansion of countless galaxies in immeasurable space as originating from the explosion of this infinitesimally small speck of energy. Never mind where it came from. This is the scientists' God... "Mommy who made the world?" "God, honey" "And who made God?" "Well, I don't know dear. God just always was." The scientist says, "I dunno how the big bang stuff got there. It just did. We're still working on that one."

If there were this primordial causative event, how did it's moment to occur ever arrive?

When we think of infinity in a time sense, we think of time as going go on forever without end even if, due to entropic degradation, the universe dissipates into the nothing from whence it supposedly came. Even so, in the conventional concept of time, time will still pass eternally whether there is anything present or not, in the same way time passes in an empty closet.

Even if there is not a mind to conceive it, time passes if you want to think of time as something that passes. Even if there is nothing, time passes although without a conceiving mind a billion years is not even a billionth of a second. It is nothing.

That's what scares the crap out of many people about death, the concept that their non-existence is never-ending into the incomprehensible duration of an infinity where a thousand billion trillion trillion eons to the trillionth power is an infinitesimal fraction of the beginning moment.

But this incomprehensible duration of time not only goes into the future but extends into the past as well. So, we have this big bang. Fine, but with time going infinitely into the past how did the moment for the big bang to occur ever arrive? I mean if we're going to be dead forever why weren't we unborn forever?

Yet, here we are. Or so it seems.

[observer]

quote cc:

"Maybe if you were more interested in what you can actually find out you wouldn't have to entertain yourself with fanciful notions."

and

"science admits to knowing only what it can detect and measure"

So then, exactly who are these ''experts" who can provide all the answers? Sometimes the gods of science have some very fanciful notions. Such as...

"Do we live in the Matrix? Scientists believe they may have answered the question"...

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10451983/Do-we-live-in-the-Matrix-Scientists-believe-they-may-have-answered-the-question.html

[cc]

From the article:

"If they think this world is a simulation, then why do they think the superminds – who are outside the simulation – would be constrained by the same sorts of thoughts and methods that we are?"

[observer]

I don't know cc, but maybe we are constrained by the thoughts and methods we use now but smart humans are evolving and one day might become superminds themselves.

I like this from the article:

"It is an interesting idea, and it’s healthy to have some crazy ideas. You don’t want to censor ideas according to whether they seem sensible or not because sometimes important new advances will seem crazy to start with.

You never know when good ideas may come from thinking outside the box. This matrix thought-experiment is actually a bit like some ideas of Descartes and Berkeley, hundreds of years ago.

Even if there turns out to be nothing in it, the fact that you have got into the habit of thinking crazy things could mean that at some point you are going to think of something that initially may seem rather way out, but turns out not to be crazy at all."

[777]

"Do we live in the Matrix? Scientists believe they may have answered the question"...

Yes : 7 descends like inception movie

Normally you have to die 7 times for the top consciousness
but Saints can 'just' absorb a guy or gurl -great deal

777