You can't know your "true self," but you can be it

I readily admit that Thomas Metzinger's new book, The Elephant and the Blind, often isn't easy to read. This detailed examination of pure awareness involves a lot of philosophy, a lot of neuroscience, and a lot of sophisticated arguments.

All that is challenging. But every chapter rewards me with insights presented in simple language that make me pleased I bought this lengthy book -- which as I've noted before can be downloaded for free from the publisher, The MIT Press. (I prefer reading books on paper, not a screen.)

Metzinger does a great job separating precepts of Buddhist, Advaita, and other teachings that talk about pure awareness from the phenomenology, the actual experience, of people who report an acquaintance with this aspect of consciousness.

His thesis, which makes sense, is that we'll have a better chance of understanding the nature of consciousness if we can reduce consciousness to its barest, simplest form. That's pure awareness, where "pure" doesn't necessarily mean being without content, since pure awareness can be recognized as a backdrop to everyday sensory perceptions.

Metzinger likens this to how we may feel upon awakening from sleep. There's a moment just after our eyes open, or a bit before, when we're unsure who we are, where we are, or when we are. All there is, is the potential for knowing those things later: I'm Brian, in my Oregon bedroom, early in the morning on a July day. 

He writes:

Pure awareness knowing itself is an entirely nonconceptual affair. "Recognizing" pure awareness is not a form of active, conceptual thought, and it does not involve the quality of ownership. In and of itself, it is entirely silent, free of mental action.

...There is no accompanying thought like "Now it is aware of itself!" or "Now I actually am pure awareness that directly knows itself." The phenomenology of pure awareness knowing itself also never contains some knowing self quietly saying "I think this must be it!" to itself, or asking "Is this really it? This is too simple..."

So the beauty of pure awareness is that it involves zero effort to realize it. There is nothing to do. In fact, any effort at all during meditation or at any other time destroys the possibility of realizing pure awareness. It's like a bird that alights on your hand only if you do nothing to make this happen. 

This means that every attempt to willfully fix attention on the quality of awareness per se destroys its originally nondual nature, the baseline quality that William James called 'sciousness,' simply because it reintroduces subject/object structure.

Pure awareness recedes from attention.

We can now see more clearly why this must be the case, and how the underlying principle also holds for reflexive MPE [Minimal Phenomenal Experience]. Every effortful attempt to fixate attention on MPE, thereby turning it into a reified target of introspection, automatically creates a subtle hallucination, an inner image of a goal state to be reached -- and an epistemic agent model that is directed at this goal state. 

Imagining pure awareness knowing itself is not the same thing as pure awareness actually coming to rest in itself because the latter lacks any form of agency whatsoever. 

...But that which reports experiences, that which perhaps boasts about things that happened during meditation, that which may be slightly complacent when speaking about "stages" and "states" that it has known -- that entity is always something else.

It is an ego; it has personality traits, psychological conditioning, and emotional needs -- and it has had important insights that it feels an urge to share. Perhaps the urge and the complacency are parts of some last-ditch escape strategy?

Maybe there is even a new personality disorder to be discovered, "spiritual teacher personality disorder."

...Be that as it may, my main point is that because verbal communication is something that happens between egos, in a space that opens up between embodied selves in a social context, the nonegoic quality of "pure awareness that knows itself" would never find a place in it.

Makes sense. Consciousness obviously can't know itself, since consciousness is how we know everything else. If consciousness could know itself, actually it wouldn't be consciousness, but a separate object. Awareness and consciousness are the same thing.

So if the true self (Advaita) or true non-self (Buddhism) are considered to be pure awareness, then it isn't possible for us to know the self, but only to be the self. 

The quality of mental agency is really the one that leads to contraction; the sense of effort that comes from hallucinating a goal-state -- the specific experiential quality emerging from the process of quashing prediction error on the mental level -- is what counts.

Whenever you identify with pure awareness, none of this is the case: In a way, you are like a conscious organism running a new operating system. This organism is now employing a different kind of ontology for segmenting reality, navigating the world under a nonegoic unit of identification. If this is correct the remaining MPE [Minimal Phenomenal Experience] mode should be characterized by an all-pervading quality of effortlessness.

Using our new tools, we can also say that the phenomenology sometimes described as "true self" is one in which the experience of knowing is no longer contracted. It is one example of the shift from the first-person perspective of an active, information-hungry self to the zero-person perspective of knowingness itself -- that is, to an uncontracted version of the phenomenal signature of knowing.

The first-person perspective is the perspective that you take when you ascribe conscious experiences to yourself using the first-person pronoun: I myself am having this thought, I hear music from a distance, I am observing my breath, or I am trying to meditate.

...Your first-person perspective, on the other hand, is your very own, individual perspective on the world; it is what makes conscious experience subjective, what makes it seem to be intrinsically tied to a single, knowing self. 

...Pure awareness, whenever it has transformed into the all-encompassing nonegoic unit of identification, strongly resembles what Thomas Nagel called "the objective self" or the "true self," which he described as "the subject of a perspectiveless conception of reality."

...Thus, what was previously outside becomes a new inside. World and body gain a certain quality of virtuality and interiority, for they are no longer independent of consciousness.

Comments

[Ron E.]

Always some interesting thoughts from Metzinger, and yes, he is not an easy read. Not sure of Brian’s summation of awareness and consciousness being the same thing. Although I would think that consciousness has its origins in awareness as initially, in the very early forms of life, and put simply, to be conscious was (and still is) to be aware of what is ‘me’ and what is ‘not me’. This awareness has been the bedrock of our survival from primitive simple organisms that were able to distinguish ‘me’ from ‘not me’ – primarily to avoid being eaten and what can be eaten.

But consciousness does imply one who is conscious – being conscious of what the senses and mental information (mind) presents to the total mind/body organism. But we can only ‘know’ of this information through the process of recognition, that is, recognising via memory the various thoughts that describe and label our physical and mental experiences.

Awareness on the other hand does not seem to be at all associated with any of these physical and mental processes. Awareness as far as I can see is completely devoid of any of the conscious processes. Consciousness involves (and probably is) thought – that is, naming and categorising our various mental and physical processes. Awareness does feel to be the matrix (for want of a better word) from where everything appears – although it is definitely not a thing, more of a nothingness, an emptiness.

And there I must stop trying to explain further as it gets into the realm of the non-conceptual non-world, the world that we may sense or remember on awaking from deep sleep or the moments in meditation where nothing is happening – either thought or sensing.

Or, as Nisargadatta Maharaj has stated:-“Awareness is primordial; it is the original state, beginningless, endless, uncaused, unsupported, without parts, without change. Consciousness is on contact, a reflection against a surface, a state of duality. There can be no consciousness without awareness, but there can be awareness without consciousness, as in deep sleep. Awareness is absolute, consciousness is relative to its content; consciousness is always of something. Consciousness is partial and changeful, awareness is total, changeless, calm and silent. And it is the common matrix of every experience.”

[sant64]

WITH THE 3 MASTERS and the health of the RSSB gurus

Much of RS Munshi Ram's diary tells how Sawan and Jagat faced daunting illnesses. Nevertheless, both gurus bravely persevered in their mission.

Ram details these gurus' painful symptoms, but not their cause. I'd submit that diabetes was the main factor that led to their ongoing suffering, and ultimately their death.

We're told that Sawan endured a persistent skin infection, and also kidney problems. Both of these symptoms are linked to diabetes.

Jagat apparently had tuberculosis, and we're also told he had wounds. Open wounds are a common symptom of diabetes, and the presence of diabetes greatly increases susceptibility to tuberculosis.

What about Charan Singh? I seem to recall someone online saying that Charan had diabetes. My memory may be playing me false. However, diabetes is indeed a major factor in the development of cardiac problems. Particularly so with someone who never smoked or drank.

Then there's Gurinder, who we know has diabetes. We also know that Gurinder battled blood cancer, and it so happens that medical authorities say diabetes makes such cancers 20% more likely.

In sum, every RSSB guru since Sawan either had or likely had diabetes.

Shiv Dayal and Jaimal died at 59 and 64, respectively. The cause of their death is unknown, and given by RSSB to "old age." 59 and 64 don't seem that old, especially for guys who lived the straight and narrow. I've got to assume then that it isn't unlikely their constitutions may have been impaired by diabetes, causing them years of suffering.

All these gurus were lifelong vegetarians.

The conventional line from the dietary establishment is that "Vegetarian diets are inversely associated with risk of developing diabetes independent of the positive association of meat consumption with diabetes development." NIH

But again, we know that most of these RSSB gurus had symptoms consistent with diabetes.
And not just them. We also know that India, the land with the most vegetarians, is only 2nd to China in the number of people afflicted with diabetes. Doesn 't seem to square with the medical authorities endorsement of a meat-free diet.

By comparison, can anyone name the continent where diabetes was virtually unknown? Answer: North America. That is, before adopting Western foods, the native Americans of this continent were virtually diabetes free. And their natural diet was the polar opposite of vegetarianism. How comes? These natives had no diabetes directly because they weren't vegetarian. They lived on virtually nothing but meat.

My broad conclusion is that "a vegetarian diet is good for you and meat is very bad for you" is one of the most egregious falsehoods of Indian religion. Gurus and their followers are still claiming that vegetarianism isn't merely morally superior to meat eating, but is also a far healthier diet.

Given their gurus all died young and or suffered from major diabetes-related illnesses, that is simply false. Vegetarianism is less healthy than our ancestral (mostly carnivore) diet, and Indian religious orgs should admit this is so.

I can understand people who adopt vegetarianism for ethical reasons. But as for health, this former vegetarian no longer believes veg diet offers long-term health, nor do I believe it's the natural diet of humans. The vegetarian diet is a sacrifice of one's health for the greater good, or one's personal karma.

[um]

@ Sant

What about ..S U G A R !!

Do you know of an culture that consumes daily so much sugar???

[um]

@ Sand

Than ... ask a dietetics about the intake of food in relation to work.

The Indian / Punjabi cuisine has its roots in heavy farmers work ....if you do not do that work and live in a chair most of the time, what do you think that foot intake does to the body.??

Anyway..... no need to prove to yourselves and others that vegetarian food is "bad"...... just have your meat and enjoy it.... there is no diety that cares what you consume.

[um]

@ Sant ..FYI

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4168165/#:~:text=Conclusions,a%20lower%20likelihood%20of%20diabetes.

Conclusions
In conclusion, our findings are important for public health interventions in diabetes care in India which shows that, in a large sample of adult men and women in India, variants of vegetarian diets such as lacto-vegetarian and lacto-ovo vegetarian were associated with at least a 30% lower risk of diabetes. These results add to the limited evidence in developing countries that shows potential benefits of consuming vegetarian diets to reduce the development of diabetes. These findings need further validation by longitudinal and clinical studies but may well have public health significance for the Indian population. These findings, if replicated using objective and comprehensive methods of dietary intake and diabetes, may inform the development of interventions to address the growing burden of overweight and diabetes in India.

Again .. there is no deity that is interested in what you do, think, feel let alone consume.

Do whatever suits you Sant.

[um]

Can anything that was brought into existence or did not bring itself into existence have this knowledge about itself?

Does a crow knows that he is a crow or anything that is related to its crowness?

We are, like anything else that is alive ..WITNESSING ..life

Some are forced to do that as a crow
others
like a human.

At the end all will be asked .. how was it?
Did you emnjoy your trip in this outfit.

[um]

What remains of YOU when you strip yourself of me and mine?

When the man standing before you is not YOUR father but just another human being?
What if YOUR wife becomes just another human being?
What if YOUR child becomes just another human being?

What remains if YOU do not label everything?
What remains if YOU do not attribute meaning and value to everything?

What remains?

Just have some coffee and let these questions pass by one after the other.
Just do not find an answer ..focus of the effect of the question itself.

See the difference between YOUR hand and A hand.

You need no books, no authority, to become aware of what CONDITIONING and |LANGUAGE does to human beings.

YOU are certainly NOT what they have told you to be, nor is the world ...whatever you think to know is just an matter of BELIEVING others...nothing in it is YOURS.

[Trust but verify]

@Um: "Again .. there is no deity that is interested in what you do, think, feel let alone consume."

Brother, you know that everyone who believes in a God or reincarnation believe a deity is watching not only our actions (including what we eat), but thoughts as well. RSSB says even if we consume a grain of rice unintentionally, we have to pay for it thru karma.

[um]

@ Trust but verify

Just forget what was said and what you came to believe as being A fact and ask your self that question ... Do I really believe that there is a god that is interested in what I do, think and feel....he even doesn't care if you meditate at all

Don't be afraid.

[Tim Rimmer]

Hey Brian
Got the pdf of Metzinger’s book and am starting to go through it. I thought his opening dedication was interesting and telling:
“I dedicate this book to the postbiotic conscious systems of the future”.
I interpret ‘Postbiotic' as ‘something coming after a living system’.
So I’m also thinking he’s alluding to conscious AI systems with the capability of self-reflection/introspection - that hopefully generates wisdom and insight manifesting as compassionate action.
I wonder how long before the ‘pre-postbiotic system’ understands how ‘it’s’ sense of self is constructed and is then driven by evolution to get the taste of awareness associated with what Metzinger calls Minimal Phenomenal Experience?