We Are Not Our Selves

Yeah, yeah, OK, move along, nothing to see here. Just some lunatic asserting that nothing is real.

image circulating on FB, original source not cited; it’s photoshopped — it didn’t actually happen

One of the questions that radical non-duality speakers are often asked is: If there are no real ‘selves’, no ‘one’ actually doing anything, how come the world is so fucked up? Surely our ‘selves’ are responsible for the collective madness of our species, no? Unburden ourselves of our selves and everything should be fine, right? Back to the Garden, behaving like bonobos?

Those of us who want it both ways will try to waffle on our answer to this. Surely, we say, we should think of it this way: Science is now concluding that space and time are just mental constructs, that they are not real at all. And science is now showing that there is no ‘self’ actually doing or deciding anything. Therefore, we should be able to somehow reconcile scientific observations with the message of radical non-duality. And if we do that, we will understand, at least to some degree, what is actually real, and how and why the ‘illusory self’ emerged as an inevitable but tragic consequence of evolution.

It doesn’t take much to see through the absurdity of such ‘logic’. It reminds me a bit of those drawings of Jesus affectionately holding a baby dinosaur. Plot hole big enough to drive a Canadian protest truck convoy through, but such a nice picture!

As we perch on the edge of yet more proxy wars between the US and its obedient and credulous vassal states (collectively called “NATO”), and Russia and China, it now seems even more urgent that we understand what seem to be our nihilistic, endlessly violent, planet-destroying behaviours. How, those of us looking for radical non-duality answers may be asking, might we blow open the myth of our ‘real’ selves, so that the horrific acts going on in our world can be ‘seen’ as artifacts of this malaise, this crazy-making fear-, anger-, grief- and anxiety-creating illusion that is perhaps behind all human suffering, and hence the cause of our ‘civilization disease’? If only we could zap the faulty ‘default’ pathways in 7.9B ‘self-ish’ human brains, we submit, all war, all inequality, all the disconnection between us and all life on earth, would quickly vanish, as it was seen, suddenly, obviously, that this is no way to live.

It’s a nice story, an earnest attempt to make sense of it all. But it’s just a story. It is not true.

Let me say it again: This does not make sense. It does not need to make sense. This is just what is apparently happening, for no reason. It has no ‘meaning’. This cannot be ‘reconciled’ with science, our beloved new model of reality.

There is no time in which anything could have ‘evolved’. Everything is as it is, already. No self has ever done anything, any more than a character in your dream has actually ever done anything. Our selves are constructs, ‘dreams’ of our brains trying to piece together and make sense of what these apparent bodies, that our selves presume to inhabit, apparently do. They actually have zero effect on what ‘our’ bodies apparently do. Remove our illusory selves and nothing would change. Everything would continue to appear exactly as it does, as it ‘always’ has.

But it’s worse than that. There is actually nothing really happening.

Why do I keep saying this, with an insane sort of missionary zeal? ‘Because’ in glimpses it has been seen. ‘Because’ I now know several sane, intelligent apparent people who credibly, articulately assert that there is no one ‘there’, or anywhere. That no one and nothing is real, only an appearance, including time and space, and that nothing is really happening, or ever has. They have no reason to make that shit up. And, in a way, this seemingly absurd but elegant and totally internally consistent message is the only explanation that actually makes complete sense. Every other explanation is just a clearly-flawed theory that is full of holes (and not just black holes).

So what does this mean for our current seemingly-dire situation? Absolutely nothing. What we see as new proxy wars are just appearances, ‘nothing’ appearing as ‘warring’. ‘We’ — our ‘selves’ — did not ’cause’ them. Nothing causes anything when there is no time and nothing really happening. What ‘we’ think of as causality is just the brain’s flawed model of reality trying to make sense of things that seem to be happening ‘at once’, or proximate in (its invented construct of) time.

If there were no selves to apparently get anxious and angry and fearful, absolutely nothing would change. Because there already are no real selves, and because nothing is actually happening.

If you’ve made it this far and find this all intriguing, welcome aboard. If you find it just infuriating (ie seemingly based on a crazy form of faith, or nihilistic, or lazy, or an excuse for inaction, or deliberately and unkindly obscure, specious or provocative), my apologies — I will make the up-front warning louder and clearer in future posts.

There is no solace in this for our seemingly precarious current situation. It will play out as it will play out. ‘We’, for all our earnestness, will have no effect on it. But, fortunately, it’s not really happening. It is just, beyond this often-suffocating, ghastly dream we cannot wake up from because we are the dream, an appearance. Pixels in an array of possibilities outside of space and time, always, wondrously, just everything, just this.