by Greg Goode
Evolution, Neuroscience and Western Emptiness
Directly experiencing the self and objects in the world as substantive, mind-independent, real entities is efficient in a Darwinian, evolutionary sense. This helps answer a puzzling question emptiness students often carry in the back of their mind. “Well, if the idea of an inherent self is false, why did we humans develop it in the first place?” A plausible answer is that evolution does not concern itself with what’s true, but with what provides an advantage for survival. And illusions can have survival value. Even if, according to Metzinger’s theory, the self is a complex process and not a single entity, treating it as a single, permanent thing makes it much easier for the organism to navigate the world and better manage itself. Thus the “self as a single object” is part of a simple, efficient evolutionary design. Metzinger calls our tendency to posit individual objects where there are none the “error of phenomenological reification.” This is a well-known error in Buddhism, of course, and many emptiness meditations are designed to counteract it through their focus on relations and dependencies.
So there are indeed some evolutionary advantages to having a self, but Buddhist analysis also has shown that a substantive conception of the self causes tremendous suffering. In fact, Metzinger himself looks at evolution quite soberly:
Evolution as such is not a process to be glorified: It is blind, driven by chance and not by insight. It is merciless and sacrifices individuals. ... Biological Ego Machines such as Homo sapiens are efficient and elegant, but many empirical data point to the fact that happiness was never an end in itself.
Metzinger (2009)
Metzinger ends his book Being No One in a visionary and hopeful tone, suggesting that insights into no-self and the nature of our consciousness can help humans to “wake up” and improve their lot.
We have to stop glorifying our own neurophenomen ological status quo, face the facts, and find the courage to think about positive alternatives in a rational way. In the end, taking responsibility for the future development of our own conscious minds also is an obvious implication of the project of Enlightenment. ... As soon as the basic point [of Metzinger’s theory of subjective experience] has been grasped ... a new dimension opens. At least in principle, one can wake up from one’s biological history. One can grow up, define one’s own goals, and become autonomous. And one can start talking back to Mother Nature, elevating her self-conversation to a new level.
Of course, the 2500-year-old Buddhist project of liberation is crucially based on seeing through the illusion of the self, as Metzinger is well aware of. The path to Buddhist enlightenment is so far the most prominent and tested method to “wake up from one’s biological history,” or as Buddhists put it, “from our shared human karma.”
There is another major parallel in Metzinger’s approach to the traditional Buddhist project. Buddhist practitioners actively cultivate wholesome states of mind, such as mindfulness, the love of all beings and compassion, through meditation. Metzinger, himself a decades-long meditator, similarly believes that the cultivation of “good” states of consciousness is a major opportunity for human beings. Through technological and neuroscientific progress we will be able to influence mind states in ever new ways:
The interplay of virtual-reality technology, new psychoactive substances, ancient psychological techniques such as meditation, and future neurotechnology will introduce us to a universe of self-exploration barely imaginable today.
Metzinger (2009)
Metzinger points out that this raises difficult ethical questions and that society needs to come to a consensus on the crucial question, “What is a good state of consciousness?”
If Metzinger’s predictions about “the consciousness revolution” are right, it will be neuroscience that will ultimately drive home the ideas of no-self and the illusory nature of experience to a wider audience – beyond the disciplines of philosophy, neurobiology and consciousness studies – and probably sooner than you think. That carries, as he points out, the significant danger of nihilism on a personal and societal level. Society’s view of what it means to be a human being will change dramatically, and conscious mind states are up for radical reengineering!
We consider neuroscience as seen by Metzinger to be one novel variant of Western emptiness. Buddhists have thousands of years of experience in dealing with at least some of the resulting problems that Metzinger is concerned about. For example, they know how to counteract nihilism through active cultivation of compassion and the two-truths doctrine. They also have deep insights into what it means to cultivate wholesome rather than destructive mind states. Without naïvely assuming that any of this maps directly onto a Western context, surely Buddhism contains tremendously valuable resources for any Western debate on these issues. Perhaps even the idea of joyful ironism developed in this book may prove useful, as it provides a way to simultaneously have your cake (the self) and eat it (no-self) without necessarily privileging one position over the other.
Seeing Our Reality as Virtual
In the following meditation, we will employ the notion of virtual reality to get a better feel for Metzinger’s theory. You can use any notion of virtual reality that you might be familiar with, as long as it can also apply to the self!
Meditation – Virtual Reality
Imagine that your world is a virtual reality. It could be a virtual reality created by the brain as in Thomas Metzinger’s self-model theory. Or it could be created by higher-order functions of the type suggested in The Matrix trilogy, or perhaps by Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom’s computer simulation argument.28 Choose the flavor of virtual reality with which you resonate the most!
Now imagine that within this virtual world there is an immovable center of your experience – the self. But imagine that in this case, the self is “just virtual,” part of the overall virtual reality. The virtual world and the experiential center are all part of the same creation, thanks to neural or computational functioning.
Imagine further that this virtual reality contains several stories, such as “The self is independent,” and “The self has free will.” Imagine how you can’t see the mechanics by which this virtual reality operates, but that you take the contents and stories as real. The self and the world seem really to be there. Now ask yourself:
“Would that world look any different from the world I am experiencing now?”
If your answer is no, then this begins to cast doubt on the traditional idea that you are now truly experiencing a real world and a real self.
The virtual reality models don’t even have to be proven true in order to be helpful with our emptiness meditations. Even as alternative explanations of our experience, they can weaken our current attachment to the story of an objective self in an objective world. When you get a taste of these possibilities, then even the traditional objective-world model begins to loosen up and appear virtual as well.
Metzinger’s notion that no one is really born, and no one really dies, obviously is an existentially deeply significant consequence of his theory. Buddhist no-self theorists and practitioners have made similar statements. Perhaps when reading that the self is an illusion you may wonder if someone is fooling somebody here. But no, if you look carefully, there simply is no agent in the system: neither one that creates the illusion of the self, nor anyone who is mistaken about the existence of the self. There is no one home. This is why Metzinger calls it “no one’s illusion.”
Impersonal Awareness
In the previous meditations, we have used cognitive psychology and neuroscience to deconstruct the self loosely and speculatively by reducing it to neural events. But other approaches are also possible. The idea is not to land on neuroscience as the best or truest account of the world, but to use its explanatory machinery to help us abandon the attachment to our selves and the world as solid, unitary, objectively existent entities. In the emptiness approach, one follows the spirit of this ancient Ch’an text, which says,
Do not sea
rch for the truth;
only cease to cherish opinions.
Seng-ts’an (2001)
So let’s take another approach to deconstructing the notion of the independent, separate self which is used in various kinds of popular non-dual teachings, such as Advaita, Dzogchen and Mahamudra. That is, we will see how the separate self can be seen as an arising in impersonal awareness.
For the purposes of these meditations, we will define impersonal awareness as that to which appearances appear. According to the awareness teachings, even the body and mind are nothing more than a set of sensations, feelings and thoughts. In a generic way, they can be called appearances or arisings. These arisings appear in awareness and dissolve back into awareness. This is why awareness is not personal. Awareness can’t be inside the body when it is the body that arises to awareness. Rather, the body is “in” awareness.
Meditation – Deconstructing the Self into Impersonal Awareness
Take a moment and bring up the idea, the feeling, of the separate self. Let the feeling of the self occur to you how ever it feels the strongest. You may feel like the self is primarily a doer, a chooser, a story or set of memories, a set of profound values, or a localized area in the body.
Mini-Meditation – The Self as Doer
With the feeling of the separate self in mind, let’s take a look at “doing.” Try to concentrate on the self as a doer, actor, chooser, decider or controller.
Let’s begin by trying to find an action itself. Notice how an action that is performed arises in impersonal awareness as a set of bodily sensations. In fact, even the body is not experienced to be objectively present, but appears as a combination of sensation-like arisings and a thought which says, “That is the body.”
The same thing can be noticed about movements – they arise as various senses of flow in combination with thoughts which say, “That is my body moving.” And if you were to look for the various sensations and thoughts, they will not be found separate from impersonal awareness either. The only common element to any of these arisings is awareness. You never come into contact with the sensations or thoughts themselves that are outside of awareness. You never find an action in itself. And even the basic elements into which the action is deconstructed – even these cannot be found in themselves.
Now let’s look for the doer that feels like it is the author or chooser of that action. Notice that such an entity is not seen or heard or touched or tasted or directly intuited. A thought arises to impersonal awareness that claims, “The chooser chose that” or “I willed that.” But an independent, separately existing doer or chooser cannot be found in any way.
Mini-Meditation – The Self as Memories
Bring up the feeling of the separate self again. This time, see if you can focus on the self as the main character in the memories, in the story of your life. The tricky thing is this: of course, we don’t think that the self is simply the story. It’s deeper than that. We feel that the self is that to which the story refers. The self seems to be something beyond the story, something objective which makes the story possible.
So let’s try to find the self to which the story refers. Notice that all the elements of the story are themselves words, pictures, sensations, perceptions, thoughts, conclusions, beliefs, etc. All these elements are arisings in impersonal awareness. So we experience the story dissolving into impersonal awareness. Now let’s try to reach beyond the story and get to that self to which the story seems to refer. But when you try to do this, what do you actually find, other than more sensations, thoughts and feelings? These also arise and dissolve in impersonal awareness. Again, by trying to find a separate self, all we have found is impersonal awareness.
Mini-Meditation – The Self as Values
Bring up the feeling of the separate self again. This time, try to focus on the self as the main character in your life. Goodness, freedom or whatever you cherish so deeply that it seems like your very self.
Notice how the values themselves occur. There may be thoughts and emotions that say how important and pivotal these things are. There might also be warm, intense, fluid, oceanic sensations when you consider these values. The values might also have changed over time. You may value something today that you didn’t value ten years ago. These thoughts, feelings and sensations are all arisings in awareness.
If you look beyond these thoughts, feelings and sensations for the values in themselves, do you encounter anything that is not again a thought, feeling or sensation? Do you find a value that is truly beyond these various arisings in awareness? And if you try to find a separate self that is truly constituted by these various arisings, are you able to find it? What does it look like? How does it feel? Notice that the answers to these questions are always in terms of even more thoughts, feelings and sensations. Notice that you do not get beyond arisings, which all dissolve into impersonal awareness. The only common factor is this awareness itself. And it is not separate or personal.
Mini-Meditation – The Self as a Localized Spot in the Body
Bring up the feeling of the separate self again. But this time, try to think of the self as being localized in the body. Perhaps it seems to be in the heart area. Or perhaps behind the forehead, above and behind the eyes. Perhaps you feel it to be in the blood, as esoteric Western metaphysicians like Rudolf Steiner used to say.
Now try to find the self that is (in) this spot. First, the body itself cannot be found outside of certain sensations, feelings and thoughts. Even if you stub your toe or bump your head against something, you haven’t found anything more objective than feelings and sensations (one of which is intense pain), and beliefs (one of which may say, “That’s my toe!”). All of these feelings, sensations and thoughts are arisings in impersonal awareness.
We are not finding a body. We are not finding that the body is objectively “there.” We are not finding that the body has locations inside it. So we are not finding a particular spot in the body that is the separate self. As with the previous meditations, all we “find” is impersonal awareness.
Even Impersonal Awareness is Empty
In our overall approach, we are treating impersonal awareness as parallel to the various notions of physicalist neuroscience that we’ve touched upon in this chapter. We are not saying that either account is a true, definitive, accurate picture of reality.
Instead, our purpose is to show how either one of these very different approaches can be used as a tool to deconstruct the notion of a fixed, separate, independent self.
For the emptiness student, the trick is to see not only that the self is empty, but also that one’s tools are equally empty. For a particular person, one of these accounts might be more appealing than the other, so it is nice to have such varied options. Even so, in both cases, the tools are just as empty as the phenomena deconstructed by the tools. According to the emptiness teachings, everything is empty, even emptiness.
Realizing your tools as empty allows you to see them merely as useful aids in dislodging attachments and fixed ideas, but not as true in themselves. You can then use the tools while not clinging to them. Of course, it very well may happen that the tools feel sticky, substantial and inherently true. For example, it may seem that these meditations cannot work unless the tools are not empty. If this happens, then you can always inquire into the inherent truth and existence of the tools themselves. You would go about this by treating the tools and teachings like any other target of refutation. You would look for their true existence and see if it can be found. The various chapters in this book might be of assistance in this regard. When looking into the emptiness of spiritual teachings as tools, you might find the chapters entitled “Deconstructing Presence,” “Liberating Yourself from Rigid Beliefs” and “Living a Joyfully Empty Life” to be helpful.
What’s Left of the Self?
We have just seen a variety of approaches that deconstruct the notion that the self is a unified, independently existent entity. It doesn’t exist in the inherent way we think it d
oes. Rather, it has been found to have relational, interdependent and constructed aspects.
Does this mean that we discard the entire notion of the self? No. Actually, doing these various meditations serves to recontextualize the notion of the self. Instead of seeing the self as inherent and independent, we can retain a self that we acknowledge is empty, convenient, conventional – and perhaps useful and efficient when needed.
But Don’t We Want More Self Than This?
Even if you generally agree with the Buddhist view that there is a connection between self and suffering, you may still wonder, “Aren’t there good aspects to having a self? Are we throwing the baby out with the bathwater?”
Certain strands in Western culture encourage a self that seems to be fuller, richer and more robust than the empty self that is just a convenient fiction. For example, many psychologists see a healthy sense of self as an important marker of psychological health. Self-actualization is a popular pursuit. Setting boundaries between one’s individual self and others is seen as an important skill for building relationships and healing from dysfunctions.
Positive Psychology
Sometimes individualism is highly valued. Being master of one’s own destiny, becoming integrated and powerful are quite often desired. There is even evidence that people rating high on these dimensions, for instance in relation to self-efficacy, are happier than those who don’t. There is even an academic field of research called “positive psychology” that studies how to be happy.
Robert Biswas-Diener at Portland State University is sometimes called the Indiana Jones of positive psychology because he has traveled to India, Greenland, Israel, Kenya, and Spain in his studies. He says that in very broad terms, Western cultures tend to be more individualistic and Eastern cultures tend to be more collectivistic or group-oriented. A number of research studies highlight the part that culture plays in shaping how much one values the goals and needs of others, versus the goals and needs of one’s self.