Does the Self Exist?
The best way to understand the self is not to talk about it, but to experience it in pure awareness, through insight and meditation. When the true nature of the self is revealed in a brief yet infinite flash of clarity, we need not describe it in any way– it’s just a very beautiful experience.
Does the self exist?
This is an age old question that philosophers, psychologists, and spiritualists alike have grappled with for thousands of years and is source of constant struggle for us as human beings.
I believe that the answer is neither “yes” nor “no” and simultaneously both “yes” and “no”.
Are you confused?
That’s the point!
To say that the self is nothing more than a mere illusion is not entirely accurate. We know that the self exists because we are self-aware and are constantly trying to preserve it through eating, avoiding danger, procreating, and whatnot.
At the same time, the self, or more precisely the ego, is not a permanent fixed reality. Otherwise, we would not need to constantly grasp and cling to our sense of self and identity to keep telling ourselves that we do, in fact, exist.
As a construct of the mind, the ego is impermanent and dies with the body. Our sense of self is not an absolute reality that can be mapped to any part of the body and exists only in relation to the not-self (i.e., other people and things in our environment). Mind and body cannot exist without each other and are in fact merely different manifestations of the same reality.
The metaphysical quandary as to whether or not the self exists is a mere consequence of our cognitive and perceptual limitations. The duality does not really exist in the realm of the absolute not bound by verbal differentiation and other human cognitive limitations. Verbal differentiation is a process through which certain aspects of something that is whole are illuminated at the expense of others, lending to an incomplete picture of its true reality. That is why the more we try to dissect and analyze the true nature of the self, the more confused we become.
Absolute reality is formless, shapeless, whole, and undifferentiated, so the question as whether or not something exists is simply irrelevant. Dualities of all kinds dissolve in the realm of the divine.
The best way to understand the self is not to talk about it, but to experience it in pure awareness, through insight and meditation. When the true nature of the self is revealed in a brief yet infinite flash of clarity, we need not describe it in any way– it’s just a very beautiful experience.