Life Without Self?

"We are the world; not separate individuals."

This powerful statement by Krishnamurti challenges the common perception of humanity's place in the universe. According to him, realizing this liberates us from all problems and allows us to experience life differently than we are accustomed to doing.

We have been filled with thoughts of others, which we have selectively adopted depending on where we happened to be born, what we have experienced, and what we have learned. Beliefs are tenacious and often last a lifetime.

Two persistent illusions of our mind are the concepts of separateness and time. Modern physics knows that there is no separation and that time is just one dimension. Our mind experiences it differently. It divides the world into the self and the non-self. By fragmenting the world, we create a contradiction that requires a new instrument to resolve. The old brain won't give in. To it, the self is the center of the universe.

Life without the self is seeing life directly, as it is. Seeing directly reveals the mind's tricks, its illusions. Is this possible, and how?

Professor Pathik Wadhwa points out in his recent lecture that our brain constructs a model of the world, and this model generates the sense of self. We feel separate from other people, the self feels as an independently existing entity, an experiencing subject. 

This is a mistake. Yet we apply this view in our lives. 

Our brains do not receive the world directly, but use an internal model to interpret it. Our brains receive 11 million bits of information every second and can process only about 50 bits per second. To solve this dilemma, we take some hints and make a best-guess prediction of what is happening right now and use conscious processing to register and correct errors. This process is based on our past experience and knowledge, not on facts. 

It is important to distinguish the self as a biological entity and the sense of self. The self lives in time. The sense of self is a representation, a model produced by the brain. It is enormously adaptive and this was a gigantic leap in the evolution of the brain. It differentiates us from animals, allows us to plan and anticipate, and helps us to communicate with concepts and work together for a common goal. 

Wadhwa points out that the sense of self comes to conscious awareness 100–150 ms before the signal from the outside world. This makes us feel that the self is independently observing outer happenings. This is not what actually happens. We are just conditioned to think so, fooled by our brains.

There are four structural reasons why we cannot correct this mistake by regular attention and awareness. First, the representations are transparent; we cannot see them. Secondly, we apply certain rules in discerning what is real and what is not. The sense of self feels real. The third reason is timing: the sense of self comes slightly before the experience of it. The fourth reason is that self-simulation is the brain's default state. Self-model is the primary and most persistent subject matter of the brain.

To change this model, we must first realize that it is our own making. It is based on conflict and causes us suffering. The self cannot solve this by self-observation because it is produced by the system observed. Secondly, the self is always temporally behind itself; it lives in the past. There is no present state of the self.

We are left with two options: negation and choiceless awareness. Negation means seeing the limits of thought and starting from what is, and not creating new beliefs, practices, or methods. Seeing what is means dropping everything we know. 

Choiceless awareness means perceiving without a centre (sense of self). Negation clears the false routes, and awareness connects us with the actual world.

According to Wadhwa, all this is pure logic, not metaphysics. So cessation of self-referential activity is not a journey. There is no movement in the removal of the superimposed, no path, no method, no working through specific contents, no gradual transformation.

Professor David Bohm took a further step. In his books and seminars he suggested that our brains are actually connected with everything in the universe, but we form a partial image of the whole. This is due to thinking, which is, by its very nature, limited and conditioned. 

In their many dialogues, Krishnamurti and David Bohm said that to free the mind, time must end. The sense of self is movement in time. When it ends, there is a mutation in the brain cells and something totally new takes place.

The mind living in the illusion of time and separateness seeks a way out. In direct connection with the world the "I" has no role; there is no experiencer, no observer, no center of the mind. There is only the mighty roar of life. When the "I" is not there, the universe opens up as it is.

I came across this idea in the spring of 1977, and it blew my mind. I realized that life is a miracle that the human mind cannot comprehend—nor does it need to. We can waste the brief period we call life searching for happiness or our own truth. Life itself lies open before us at all times. 

Connecting with the miracle of life is the best way to live.

Krishnamurti proclaimed this radical idea for 66 years. He brought people to the threshold of understanding, but each person must step over that threshold themselves. Then one realizes that there is no time and no separateness. He challenged us to see how the "I" holds us in its grip. If that grip loosens even for a moment, a world is revealed where the "I" has no place.

Liberation is possible at any moment. When it happens, life is something timeless and boundless. It happens now or never. Seeing the world as it is means being the world. There is no me, no time, just we and the world as one movement in and out of time.

So there are three good reasons to live without the self. They reveal themselves to the reader with little effort. You can read the book here or order it on Amazon, hardcover, paperback, or Kindle.