Daniel Ingram - Experiencing No Self: Part Three 

amazing convo you deserve so many subs man

I've heard there are monasteries in Tibet where they use this as a test of enlightenment

@@adventuresinawareness 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣, I do not doubt that even one little bit ... I see a practicality shining through here as well when I consider a renunciate monastics' reflexes being employed to catch the one n only bowl that the holy bub will come across, to carry with them all over the place, to not let from their sight... Gotta cultivate those extremely fast reflexes or you're gonna be dining off the ground when that bowl busts wide open!!! 😂😂😂😂😂

I agree. I think meditation teachers tend to dismiss experiences they have not had too easily. It might be that the way Daniel is using the word 'thought' is different to how most people think of thoughts, since it can be common for internally verbalised thoughts to subside whilst the cognitive movement of understanding which precedes formulation into the symbols we call words might continue, but be far more subtle and hard to detect.

@@adventuresinawareness Yeah, he seemed to broaden out the definition of "stopping thought" beyond just the inner dialogue, perhaps to justify saying it's impossible. But I've also looked at those more subtle thoughts and I stop those as well. I classify thoughts into 3 types: 1) Words. At the entry level they form sentences and are loud and prominent then they get more quiet and off to the side then they are just fragments, phrases and finally just a whispered word 2) Visuals For example, when meditating and I get a flash of my kitchen which conveys the message that I should make some lunch soon. At the entry level they can be quite realistic, and at other levels then degrade to wispy impressions. 3) ?? Movements ?? Once the visuals are gone I can get the same message about making lunch with just a sort of quick 'movement' of part of my attention in the direction of the kitchen. It's not a movement of my eyes, nor is it a movement of the main part of my attention, which is still on my object of focus. It's feels like there's an additional bit of attention which manifests for a split second to move in a direction and convey the meaning. Even when all my thoughts are stopped like this, I can have deliberate thoughts in full sentences. For example, when I am analyzing what is happening, I can be silently observing the silence, and I notice a whispered word, and I can chose to either continue with the silent observing or to analyze the thought "Ah that had a combination of visual and movement. I'll have to watch to see if they always occur in combination." Then return to no thought without any problem. To some degree thoughts must be still running in the subconscious and we are preventing them from coming into the conscious awareness. But I also think that some thoughts are created or at least sustained in the conscious and we can definitely get control over that.

@@lau-guerreiro Researcher Dr. Jeffery Martin claims that the thoughts don’t stop but that the attention gets fixed on what else is appearing, which is always happening.

​@@oolala53 Perhaps Dr Martin doesn't state it exactly as you have, but if he does, I definitely disagree with it. There is no way that all of those incessant thoughts that I used to have are still running in my subconscious, because if I choose to, I can have a very slow deliberate thought, or a series of connected thoughts with long gaps. And for Dr Martin to be right, then all my old fast thoughts would have to be still running in parallel in my subconscious - that is, I must be thinking two things at the same time: one very calm and deliberate, and another, fast, jumping about 'monkey mind chatter'. There's no way that that's happening. That would be like having two different people in my head at the same time. And the other thing is that most of the time that I have thoughtless silence, it's not because I'm putting great focus onto something else. It happens when I'm just being. Every time a finish a sentence in this comment, there is silence; I rest for about 5 seconds in thoughtless silence, then I have to *decide* to reread the sentence. Then thoughtless silence. Then I have to *decide* to figure out what the next sentence should be, and then I focus on figuring out what to write. So the focused attention happens when I'm *thinking* about what to write or say. The thoughtless silence happens when I stop focusing on doing something and just rest/be. It happens in the absence of focus. But it can also happen when I focus on something, such as my breath, or a flower. Focusing on something is a good method to use to try to force your thoughts to stop. But after you've broken the habit of incessant thought, you don't have to keep focusing to stop thoughts - they're just always (most of the time) stopped unless you chose to start them.

@@lau-guerreiro you might be very surprised to find out what is happening in there on a brain scan. And if you examine further, you may find that you’re not really even in control of when you stop and focus, and when you decide. There are many who have discovered, or at least interpreted from their intense investigation, that the sense of being a decision maker is another illusion in consciousness.

Thanks. Here is a link www.dhammatalks.org/Archive/Writings/Ebooks/TheMindLikeFireUnbound_181215.pdf

No I don't think he is claiming that, I have listened to that part several times as well. He means to say sensations continue to arise and pass for both parties. Whatever the dead person's experience is, who knows, but sensations and experience will continue to arise and pass moment to moment for them and I doubt it's still going to be in the room but maybe temporarily. I hope that makes sense.

When you say Dr. Martin has found these kinds of shifts to be a myth, can you be more specific? I have Martin’s book, The Finders. Is it discussed there?

@@hansenmarc I can't completely remember what was said in the book. I think I may have been distracted when I wrote that the shifts were myths because shifts in identity do actually happen. But that they are followed by wisdom or kindness as a matter of course is not born out. Much conditioning needs to be confronted either before or after shifts in identity.

@@oolala53 that sounds right. Thanks for the reply!

Daniel is unlikely to answer here, but I can share what I believe people in his position would say: the sense of agency is an illusion, given that there is no stable unchanging self which could make decisions in the first place. This is obvious whether one takes a physicalist (materialist) stand point, in which all conscious activity is an emergent phenomena from physical processes in the brain, for which there isn't one single unchanging constant centre which we could say is the 'self', and even if there were, being a physical process it would not stand outside the cause and effect of the rest of the universe so there is no room for agency in this model If one adopts a consciousness as primary model, there is also no individual self which could have agency, only the illusion or appearance of one. From these perspectives, it would be more accurate to say meditation deconditions oneself away from the illusion of agency, or dehypnotises oneself from an illusion that can be seen to be an illusion quite quickly with rational thought, but takes longer for it to also feel this way. The illusion of agency or self falling away would not change the operational qualities given they were never caused by agency or self, since neither ever existed. I hope that helps.

I like this point, although what is looked for here is not something separate from us that has to be perceived to be known, but rather our very self, the one perceiving. If that can't be found, then it may certainly shift someone's self-understanding away from what is commonly thought

Totally agree. 1) Just because we can't perceive something doesn't mean it doesn't exist. I can't perceive my liver, nor can I perceive the different gases in the air that I breath. But they do exist. 2) In order to look for something and claim that you couldn't find it, you must first be able to describe what you are looking for. If you don't know what it looks like, then how can you claim that you didn't find it? What would the self look like if it existed? Would it be red? Blue? Big? Small? I can't believe that more people don't shoot the "I looked but I didn't find a self" claim down using these two simple and obvious points.

@@adventuresinawareness What exactly does the self look like? How would you know if you found it? What if the self is invisible? Is that possible? I think if the self exists then it is most likely invisible. Ask any person who believes we have a soul, whether they think a soul can be seen or felt, and 99% will say "of course not!" Yet Advaita seekers are too deferring to the authority of the guru to challenge them with this obvious point. Nevertheless, I think self-enquiry is useful, if done in a certain way, which I will now describe. My 1st objective was to find the location of the “I”, and 2nd objective was to place my awareness on that location for as long as possible and to experience what it feels like: 1) Find the location as precisely as possible, ideally to a single point. Yes the “I” can feel like it is spread over an area, but where is the center of the area? Where does the I feel the strongest? Yes it’s behind the eyes somewhere, but were exactly? I located it by comparing its location to sensation points, like this: While meditating, touch your nose. Where is the “I” in relation to that sensation? In front of or behind? Above or below? The trick is to think “If I had to go to where the sensation is, which direction would I move in?” Then notice where that imagined movement starts from. Touch the back of your head... Touch the top of your left ear? Is the eye in front behind, higher, lower, left right? Touch your right ear … Touch your left ear and right ear in rapid succession. I found the “I” is located between the center rear of my ears. 2) Now place my awareness there for as long as possible and feel what it feels like. The 1st problem I had was that my eyes went cross-eyed trying to look at that spot. So it took quite a bit of training to be able to relax my eye muscles so that my eyeballs would not move, and looked straight ahead. First I used strength to hold them there, but eventually they did it effortlessly. But I also had to ‘disengage’ my visual sense data so that my awareness was not paying any attention to the visuals because that would cause the eyeballs to move (following the visuals), and also distract me from the “I” location. The next problem was being able to rest the awareness on the “I” location. It’s not normal to place awareness there so awareness keeps wanting to move elsewhere. So first I had to ‘hold’ awareness on that spot using ‘willpower/strength’, but with a bit of training I gradually needed less and less strength, and eventually could rest it there effortlessly. From here on it is a concentration meditation on the nothingness at the center of your head. Before long the sense of “I” expands and becomes ‘fuzzier’. Keep relaxing into it and it will expand further. Now open your eyes and maintain your awareness at the center of your head. If you lose it, close your eyes again, and swap between open and closed eyes until you can maintain the same experience in both situations. Now get up and walk around. Your sense of “I” will be very different to normal: much fuller, and yet emptier, more distant (less attached) yet more present. I don’t know if this is what the gurus are calling loss of “I” or if this is something else. Maybe this is finding “I”?

​@@lau-guerreiro Good points. Here's my take - but I'll respond in reverse order: 2) I would say the burden of proof is in the opposite direction, that in order to claim that something exists, you must first be able to describe it, to define what is being looked for. To anyone claiming an independent, continuously existing 'self' exists, my first question would be 'what do you mean by a 'self' and how would I recognise it if I were to encounter one? What evidence would be sufficient to know that something is real when I can't perceive directly? Once those questions are answered I could proceed to testing how findable the self is, or tenable it is to belief in its existence. 1) Given that its true that I can't directly perceive my liver or gases, why do I believe they exist? The fact I, nor anyone I know, has ever seen a unicorn isn't proof that they don't exist, but the burden of proof is more on those who claim that they do- what good reasons are there to believe unicorns exist? Or livers? Or gases? Getting really clear on this is an important step for me. (But too long to get into here.) Once I'm certain a thing exists, can I be certain that it exists continuously, unchangingly and independently of anything else? Or does it turn out that what I call a liver, for example, is constantly changing, depends on numerous conditions (a living body, the planet, the universe etc) and is made of many smaller parts (cells, molecules, atoms etc) none of which on their own can be called 'a liver'. So in what sense can it really be said to exist other than a temporary configurations of other parts, or as a temporary experience with no inherent existence on its own side. Equally, what good reasons are there to believe a self exists, given that no one I know has ever seen one, or to accurately describe what it would be if it could be found. Finally, how tenable is it that the 'thing' that you are should be so hard to find, given that it isn't something far away, distant, abstract. If its anywhere or anything, is right where you are, always, all the time. At the very least, this enquiry tends to reveal that the belief in a self existing as a separate continuous entity exerting free-willed choices on the rest of existence isn't as obvious as it can sometimes intuitively seem. Thanks for engaging - I'll now be on holiday until after new year so unlikely to be able to respond soon, but hopefully others can also join the conversation 🙏

​@@adventuresinawareness Thanks for responding. I agree with all the excellent points that you make. I see now that I didn’t make myself clear in my previous comment and it sounded as if I was asserting that there is a self existing as a separate continuous entity. That’s not what I was arguing. I was just saying that the argument that a permanent self does not exist is not as strong as its proponents think it is. My position is that we cannot know either way, and therefore, should be more humble in our assertions. My further point is that the soul-exists-or-doesn’t-exist argument is unnecessarily black and white - there are more options that those two. Primarily, there may be a temporary self, which may last for one lifetime, or if reincarnation is a thing, it might last a thousand lifetimes. I don’t understand why permanence is such an important aspect of the argument. I think that Buddha probably only introduced it so that critics of his non-attachment policy couldn’t make the argument that: "it is okay to attach to your soul and to ‘god’ because they were permanent, and therefore, can’t be taken away from you, and therefore, can’t cause you suffering." Buddha shut that argument down by claiming that neither soul (Atman) nor god (Brahman) existed. I’m agnostic about the existence of a permanent or temporary soul, but as far as evidence for it (none of these are proof, nor even strong evidence): 1) The sense of presence that is here, that is not perceived by untrained people, but which training can enhance significantly. You could say that the training is expanding the bandwidth on your receiver in order to be able to tune into the frequency of the soul. The fact that it feels good, even blissful at times - perhaps that is all just brain states? But I don’t think it should be discarded as possible evidence for the existence of something else. 2) Ghosts, spirits and all the psychic people who claim to see them (yes a lot/most are frauds or delusional). 3) Near death experiences. 4) Out of body experiences/travel. I’ve seen Daniel himself claim to have had out of body experiences. How is that possible if he is only a body and brain? 5) Meaningful coincidences, which appear to point to something going on that has some degree of co-ordination.

I know what you mean, I feel the same way sometimes - Can you describe your experience?