I’m reading Waking up by Sam Harris and I’m not sure I understand the concept of self and illusion of self. Does that mean I’m not this thing inside my head that controls the body, but that I am in fact body and my brain and there’s nothing else?
Why is that important? How can meditation and ego death help with that?
Not a English native speaker but reading in English so I’m little confused.
In: Other
Some good, some mostly bad answers here from people that think this is an argument, idea or theory.
**Experientially, that is, from your current first person perspective, reading this text, experiencing life, there is no you. As in zero.**
Let me repeat: **You literally do not exist, right now.**
“Bullshit!” you’ll say. “I’m reading this right now!”
Who is reading this? Literally, look for the one who is able to see words and describe them. There is nobody reading it – your brain is reading automatically. There is no “you” inside the brain either.
The “you” you think you are, never has been, is, or ever will be, because that is a made up construct that your brain fabricates automatically to operate in the world.
You are experiencing, right now:
– Vision (seen automatically)
– Sounds (heard automatically)
– Physical sensations (felt automatically)
– Thoughts (“heard” automatically)
– Emotions (felt automatically)
There is nothing else to the experience of life. Everything is a combination of these things.
So how can there be no “you”, but you are experiencing sensory input?
You are not “the body.” We could take out your insides and put them in a fox and you don’t disappear. You are not “the brain.” You can have a part of your brain removed during surgery and you don’t disappear.
You are “consciousness”, which we have no idea what it is or how it comes to be, but it has no traits at all. As in zero. There is no size, shape, color or description to it. The closest you’ll come is “the empty space in which reality is happening in.”
Of course, there is still a “you” from a third person conceptual point of view – like a car. But what part of the car, is a car? There is no car – just a collection of parts happening together that we slap the word “car” on.
Ego death is helpful because:
* You stop taking things in life personally. Life is not happening “to” you. This frees you of many negative emotions permanently. I would guess this decreases your total waking seconds spent experiencing negative emotions by probably 80%.
* Realize things are happening through cause and effect.
* Realize that everyone is living this way.
* You realize that “you” – that is, the you that is conscious experience are not located anywhere. It was not born. It has no death. It has no color or size. It has no anything. Fear of death? Gone. Why? Because the first person experience is not born, so it cannot die, because a first person perspective is not a living thing. It’s more like a camera angle in a video game.
To achieve ego death, you need to take psychedelics that can often force it occur, or **attempt to locate the one who is seeing and hearing in your direct first person experience.**
Ego death occurs upon the realization you cannot, because it is not there.
This can take minutes, years or never. You have to be radically honest with yourself. There is no you, and never could’ve been, and you need to prove it to yourself one way or the other whether or not I am correct. I invite you.
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