History of the Self

We choose to come into each one of our particular incarnations in order to deal with certain issues, including personal and familial, as well as societal and global. The direct and focused experience of these conditions gives us a perspective that is so concentrated in both intensity and viewpoint that the personality involved realizes, in a deeply personal way, the many pressures and ramifications, both positive and negative, involved with each of their issues and choices. From the seemingly real events of life, learning through direct experience then takes place because we believe that the issues have real significance to us; often, in fact it seems like life and death importance. Challenging us, each time, to not only see the significance of the situations that our issues put us in, and these are the issues that we hold dearly, but also to rise above the issues and to see them with a new perspective, understanding, and compassion.

Therefore, facing and working with these issues is the prime focus of the life’s purpose. Although these issues can also include partying, screwing up, laziness and other seemingly worthless activities, because we aren’t necessarily here only to deal with so called serious issues. You do not simple abandon all of your issues and become a perfect person when you have a deep revelatory experience. The experience, instead, might be to give you a new perspective on these issues. And in some cases, the experience itself may very well be one of the issues that you are here to work with.

A revelatory experience may also come from “succeeding” in working through the issues that are currently before you. After which you may follow the experience with new challenges, which are other important issues for you to work through. And as long as you are fulfilling your objectives for your lifetime, you have a reason to stay. This gives a little insight as to why a greatly accomplished Buddhist Master might also be a womanizer and a drunk. It may have been exactly that particular combination of attributes that they needed to work with in their overall personality’s development. Or, while another Master might be an impeccable great teacher, because it was their life’s “purpose” to attain highest enlightenment, and then deal with being a tireless teacher for 50 years.

The long answer is a bit more involved and it connects the threads of Buddhist philosophy together in a very organic vital way: At the most basic “level” of personality is awareness. Awarenesses that are within the greater all-encompassing “field” of awarenessness and awarenesses. And throughout this massive awareness affinities occur, and at the same time (because all is connected) connections are made to that which is “other” as well. Therefore, elements are brought together in relationships (some being more harmonious than others). As these interrelationships coalesce, an identity emerges. A combination of all these elements, which have a certain “feel” to itself.

This identity rides on the constantly changing elements as they connect and come into relationship with other like elements (through attraction) and with other (less-harmonious) elements (as all is interconnected). And while new “patterns” of this arrangement are created continuously, the wholeness of the harmonies carry on; they have recognized themself. (They are awareness, after all.) This recognition emerges as an identity of this continuously evolving whole.

Although I have written about this as though it were in a process, it is synchronous, without the need of time passing. In addition, identity can and does develop, evolving in depth, scope, and sophistication, and yet, it is ever-present as this continually emergent awareness. And obviously, the scope of possible types of identities is both unlimited in possibility and in potential development. Therefore, not all identities might wish to develop into the complicated personalities of humanoid type beings, preferring instead to be sprites or harmonies, or whatever you could possible think of. While others might naturally be more “massively” developed beings, beyond anything humanoid or even god like. The galaxy, for example, being an incredible being in its own right (there really is no such thing as “inert” stuff).

I suspect that observations by the ancients, of the basic “processes” occurring at the simplest level of identity and being, were interpreted into some basic concepts. And that these concepts would have filtered their way into their philosophies as they have come down to us through the millennia, reinterpreted and reapplied to suit succeeding movements of humanity, including the one that concerns us most, Buddhism. That is, as elemental awareness finds affinities, and identifies with harmonies of these relationships, there is a natural reinforcement and affirmative connection made with other elements that harmonize with these already present affinities of the identity. Or, to put it simply: Like attracts like. (And this is regardless of whether the identity is coalescing about a so-called moral or good or ethical set of elements or those elements of a less than noble character.)

To my mind then, the philosophy of Karma is one that is derived from the observation of this natural process of like elements reveling in like elements to itself, leading to other such connections, etc. And by extension, this same process is played out in the more complex personality of the human being. In other words, the activities and elements that we focus upon in our human lives attract to us similar activities and events and situations. Ignoble associations and activities easily lead to more similar activities. Or, simply concentrating upon a career in business or economics furthers these associations. This is obvious I realize, but I think that it a worthwhile example of the underling processes at work.

Nevertheless, because all things are “connected”, there are also connections that we have to all other types of situations as well. So the rascal is never completely separated from the opportunity to recognize more noble ambitions and could, if perhaps only a little at first, seize upon these types of activities as well as the less scrupulous parts of their personality. (Perhaps you have encountered the excellent portrayal of such a character, known as Harry Lime, by Orson Wells.) Therefore, we have a choice in what we focus upon.

In my opinion, the Hindu systemization of the philosophy of Karma has been a bit over elaborated. (The concept that when you die, if you have a particular thought in mind, you may be immediately reborn in a situation that reflects that thought, is a good example of how this mindset can get carried away.) I think that after death one has many more options available than one is aware of in life, and much more information about one’s whole, greater personality. So, the whole panoply of who one may choose to reincarnate into is much more extensive than what occurred in one simple life just past.

But having said that, I think that certainly if one has just concluded a life where one was working on something very important, but unfinished, then one might intentionally choose to reincarnate into a particular life where the threads of one’s work could be easily picked up again. And yes, in a few cases, someone who has just died, perhaps in some traumatic way, might be so angry that they might not care to become aware of their greater self or the counsels of those who help you when you have passed. And they may only wish to immediately return to take revenge or some such activity. On rare occasions this can happen, but I think it is hardly so widespread a practice as to consider it the norm. Nevertheless, when we die we are still working with the personality that we have, and many will choose to reincarnate in order to further those aspects of their personality that they wish to give the forefront of attention to in their development.

Karma, therefore, in this spacious view of mine, is this cascading experience of which self is wrought. A self with predilections and affinities that it identifies with, which bring forth similar experiences, yet is not closed off from the vast connections of the greater reality. A self whose force of experience rests on the same processes of Karma taking place at the most elemental level, with the very basic awarenesses coming forth with other awarenesses that they are in harmony and connection with. A personality, therefore, whose, experiences aren’t just its own measure, but also the greater reality that is available for it to experience in each and every one of its situations. And yet at the same time, a greater experience that comes back to it as that which it identities itself with, in both its greater personality and in its actualized physical being.

I think that the Buddha’s great insight into the nature of this system was the precious observation that this greater self is not the individual basic smaller awarenesses that synchronize and resynchronize in constant joy and expression of their own thusness. But instead, the identity of the greater-self emerges in a kind of gestalt of these fundamentals, into an evolving whole that circumvents dimension and definitive knowing, and yet is evident nonetheless in its own manifestation within the realm of beingness that it finds itself in.

And I think he saw this because he taught that in order to get to the greater truth of the self, and to get to the root of the potential problems that a personality is faced with, one would have to “understand” in a sense, the ultimate nature of personality itself. And this is done by seeing beyond the apparent situation that the self immediately finds itself in, while not identifying with the particular underlying bits of potential awareness that it can focus upon either. Seeing instead, the greater whole of the self, that surfaces from the depths of this great cacophony of individual awarenesses that are forever coming into elemental recognition and collusion, in the constant knowing of their many characteristics. And upon seeing this whole identity, that is not separable from those awarenesses, and yet is neither those awarenesses in and of themselves, the true transcendental nature of the self is realized.

And once the true identity of the self is seen, the problem and its solution are obvious: As one sees the true nature of the self, one sees it cannot be any “thing,” as it is emergent from non-things (awarenesses), and emergent from non-constants, as awarenesses are always involved in becoming more aware, so they are never constant either. The very nature of the self is then seen as non-thing and non-constant. And yet, because it is evident in reality means that it cannot be non-being either, for it does have presence. With this recognition, the emergent-self is able to see that the truth of its reality lies beyond the particular little awarenesses, and in the realm of the evident, but not the substantial.

And therefore, to reconcile an understanding of the nature of the self with this realization means that the self is, in fact, not a being but a becoming. It is not a thing, but that which can appear as a thing and “sustain” itself as a present realization of itself, (momentarily appearing as thingness in the physical world). Thus leading to the evident solution: That to know the true self means to know this that is behind all things (whether seemingly substantial or not) and not separable from them, but neither that which is the minutia of “particles” that might be involved as its source; And therefore, to not identify with (not cling to) any particular situation or seeming condition is to act in accordance with the true nature of the ever-present self.

I suspect the Buddha saw that he could escape the limitations of the other realizations of self (professed in the various movements of the time) that were founded upon the attachment of self-knowing to the learning of these substrate awarenesses. Seeing in those other movements the pitfalls of attachment that would occur when identifying with the “karmic” situation that is underlying all experience. I think that then, he saw the solution to the problems that the personality faced was in realizing this true self that was not fixed to any identity, and was instead, the gestalt that arose.

In my opinion he found the obvious, that the self was no longer in evidence as being dependent upon nor separate from all of the many processes involved in the self. And in this truth, he found that his experience of his true being then intruded, rightly, into the realm of the transcendent, without separating itself from the casual, the immediate and mundane that makes up existence. . And in this realization he perceived that he was not dependent upon the other movement’s definitions of self, because in fact, by the very nature of existence, they were not factual representations of the nature of truth.

And so, I think that he realized that the truth of the self was to know this continually emerging identity. An identity that is neither emerging, for there are no constants from which it could emerge, nor from which it could ever be dependent, because there were no constants that could be depended upon. Therefore, to know the true self meant to realize beyond the casual observation into the real observation of this whole self, that was both in nature and thus ness, independent of the specific criteria about which it formed. And was neither the nature of a self that existed without the various awarenesses that would be at the basis of any criteria in every spontaneous moment of reality.