Self Or No Self

Self Or No Self

Buddha said we do not have a self that is continuous or lasting, but we do have a self. That is confusing.

He said that the Sankharas continue, and that is what our self is.

Sankharas, karma, thoughts, feelings, fears, desires, emotions, that is what we are. Sankharas are thoughts and emotions that are created by desires and fears which cause us to act.

A sankhara is a desire for ice cream that makes you want to eat a litre of ice cream, but you can see that as an empty desire and not follow it, letting the desire go and putting your mind somewhere else, because you know that the desire is fleeting and not something real, but arose just because you saw someone eating ice cream so the desire got into your mind. I have used the term, 'fragments' in my other courses.

This is the path, to see all desires and fears etc, as sankharas that are impermanent, temporary and basically just in your imagination, but you are pushed to take action based on them because you feel it so strongly.

There is a trick of so called intuition. People often think they have a very good or strong intuition, but in reality it is usually just sankharas expressing fears or desires and making them act under the imagination that they have a gut instinct and good intuition and they are actually wise, when in fact they are just a manipulated fool who wrongly imagines themself as wise. And so, the fool stays ignorant of truth.

If you could see every desire, sankhara, in the way that it really is, just a temporary thought form in your imagination and not let yourself be frozen with fear or reckless with desire, you would attain freedom and see the reality of your being.

Each thought form, desire, fear etc, is an entity or thing in itself like a piece in a jigsaw puzzle. When we are born, the pieces have formed together to make you, your self, human personality, in this life. Then your parents make a further mess of what you are.

When you die, the puzzle is disassembled and, just to give an image for the sake of understanding the concept but of course not literally, the pieces are put in a box. They wait until a new body is born, and then they resemble the puzzle into that new person. Usually, during a life, you release some sankharas and create new ones, so you are different in each life. But it's not you, who you are in this life, it is just the puzzle made of similar pieces formed into a different shape.

Your self is only in the current life, but there is no self that continues after you die, because that self is dissolved or dismantled into pieces, each piece an individual entity of its own and the reassembly is different pieces, therefore, you who you are today, is not the same as what comes in the future. This applies from life to life but as well, from day to day. What makes the difference between a human who is conscious and a human who is not different than an animal, is the former knows this and works each day to make themselves a bit better.

The pieces are held together by static electricity, and so the collection of pieces that are connected in this way is the self that continues, but you, who you are in this life, that self, does not exist as a permanent being.

The goal to reach liberation is to see each piece individually, and deal with that fear or desire, one by one, and then work on another one. Eventually, you eliminate all the pieces, and then there are no pieces to put in a box waiting for a new body to be born for them to occupy, assuming you have not made a whole lot more during this life, which is normally what happens, and why we can never be liberated.

Destroy each piece one by one so there is nothing left to reform into a new body. Then our existence continues in the body but without the illusions and desires to create new sankharas, because the dissolving of sankharas does not mean the death of the body or personality, it just means seeing reality instead of the illusions that we live with now.

I was scared of heights, now I can sit on the edge of high cliffs with my feet hanging over. I was scared of water, now I can jump off a boat in very deep water to swim or snorkel.

Those are two fears, Sankharas that I had, without any reason or explanation as to why I would have had those fears, meaning I have no history or events in my life that would cause those fears, so they were old jigsaw Sankharas that carried over, formed into this new body, and I have eliminated them, they will not haunt me again.

Make a list of all your fears, desires, opinions, as clear a detail of your personality in a chart or spread sheet with each particular aspect of your personality and now you have a check list of things to work on.

That list should be reviewed regularly and if you find other things, add them immediately to the list.

You are nothing more than a sum of parts, like splinters stuck all over your body. Find each one and remove it.

These thoughts you have just read are in many ancient teachings. Here are some to show you that there must be something to these concepts as they have appeared over thousands of years in all parts of the world.

Buddha: I am nothing, just a sum or parts that makes me think I am an individual.

The parts dissolve at death and reassemble at birth. I am the energy that made all things.

Hermetica: I am not really human. I am made of light and life, I am beyond the cosmos. I am what made and contains the cosmos.

Kaballah, and others in that line, I am God, not just God in an individual human, but actually God itself.

All the paths say; I THINK I am human but that is false and the reality is that I am that source of all things, God. I am the magnetic force that holds the sankharas together, and my only useful activity in life is to remove them all to be pure energy without obstruction.