How Often or How Rarely Does A Self-Transcending Experience Occur?
Syamala Hari2011, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research
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Abstract
Almost always, the self is involved in our perception of the world, thinking, and actions, but it does momentarily step aside now and then. I describe below a few of my experiences of selftranscendence that seem quite ordinary with nothing mysterious about them and they are all of short duration. To explain how the self is present or not in an experience, I describe some properties characteristic of the self such as its sense of personal identity and ownership of action. Manifestation of these properties in an experience indicates the presence of the self and absence of these properties indicates its absence. In an act of observation, full attention paid to what is being observed seems to push every thought, including the self, out of the conscious mind and keep it fully occupied with the act of observation. A characteristic property of the selftranscendent state seems to be that one can only recognize such a state as being free from self, but one cannot prove that it is so because the outward effect of the state may be the same as that of an alternative state where the self is present.
Key takeaways
- Western philosophies, particularly those that emphasize reason and scientific thought, usually do not seem to indicate the existence of consciousness beyond the mind although some of them may characterize the mind as immaterial 4 .
- It suggests that a memory is not necessarily conscious and that the sense of self may simply be one of the memory aspects of the mind because indeed, the mind is a memory.
- It appears to be conscious because of its source, Consciousness (with big C), which is beyond the physical body, the universe perceived by the senses, and the mind.
- The brain/mind is more like a computer than a paper in that the brain/mind's memory has both passive and active components; the self is an active aspect of the memory because it is associated with the entire memory.
- The principles that I have used in my analysis of an experience are as follows: The self is an aspect of the mind which, as defined in the beginning of the article, is a memory.
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