The Fragile Self

This is the introduction to a book I’m writing on the Six Element Practice, which is a traditional Buddhist reflection on impermanence, interconnectedness, and non-self. For some reason I posted the first part of a draft of the first chapter before I posted this, which is unfortunate since there’s a reference in the first chapter that makes no sense until you’ve read this. Comments are very welcome. I’d like this to be a good book, and feedback is an important part of honing the writing. Chapter One has changed a lot since I posted it, so once it’s done I’ll re-post it in its entirety. In future you’ll be able to find drafts of the Six Element Book by following the six element book tags. Enjoy!

Andrew walks into a laboratory in the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and stands opposite a plastic mannequin. Researcher Valeria Petkova attaches electrodes to the middle and index fingers of Andrew’s left hand, and then places a video headset over his eyes. Through the headset, Andrew sees the images generated by two video cameras fixed to the mannequin’s head and staring down at its feet.

When Andrew looks down at his own feet, he immediately starts to have a sense that the mannequin is “him.” The feeling jumps to a new level when Petkova takes a marker and simultaneously strokes the belly of the mannequin and the volunteer. Andrew can see only the mannequin’s belly being touched, but he can feel the pen brushing against his own body. With a kind of jolt, Andrew feels that he’s actually inside the mannequin’s body. He sees the pen touching the mannequin, and “It just snapped like that,” he said, later. “I viewed the mannequin’s body as being my body.”

Next, Petkova pulls the blade of a sharp bread knife across the belly of the mannequin. Although he knows the researchers wouldn’t harm him, Andrew still feels the desire to pull away, and the electrodes on his fingertips register increased electrical activity — a sure sign of an anxious emotional response.

In a later experiment, Andrew stands opposite Petkova herself. She’s now wearing the mannequin’s video cameras, so that Andrew sees himself from her perspective. As before, he quickly begins to feel that he is in another body — her body — seeing himself from the outside. The two hold hands, and Andrew experiences Petkova’s grip as his own. She squeezes his hand, and he feels that he’s doing the squeezing. The fact that the two people are of different genders has no effect on the illusion. Men can easily identify with a female body and vice versa.

Dr. Henrik Ehrsson, who works with Petkova, calls this the “body swap illusion,” and believes it could have a role in some therapies. He also thinks that by “inhabiting” bodies very different from our own, for example people much older or younger than ourselves, or people of the opposite sex, we might be able to influence how we think about different groups of people.

Typically, it only takes 10 to 12 seconds for a volunteer to abandon his or her body and to identify with that of their partner or of a mannequin. The team says that approximately 70% to 80% of volunteers experience the illusion very strongly.

Earlier, a team at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne had discovered that they could induce volunteers to leave the body behind completely by triggering out-of-body experiences.

Using a technique similar to Ehrsson’s, the Swiss team asked volunteers to stand in front of a camera while wearing video-display goggles. Because the camera was pointing at the volunteers’s backs, they could see a three-dimensional image of their own body, which appeared to be standing right in front of them. When the volunteer’s backs were stroked with a pen, they had the feeling that it was the touch of the pen on the back of their virtual self that they were feeling, not the contact with their own back.

Electrical stimulation to specific spots in the brain can also produce out-of-body-experiences. The Swiss Federal Institute researchers found that with one woman, a stimulation to a brain region called the temporal parietal junction resulted in a sensation that she was hanging from the ceiling, looking down at her body. When the current flowed, she said: “I am on the ceiling. I am looking down at my legs.” When the current ceased, she said: “I’m back on the table now. What happened?” The woman had a normal psychiatric history and was reportedly stunned by the bizarre nature of her experience.

It’s extraordinary, really, that our sense of self can be so easily toyed with. 10 to 12 seconds of seeing our own body from the outside, or a tiny jolt of electricity to the brain, and we abandon our life-long sense of inhabiting the body we have grown up with.

Our sense of self is highly fragile. But perhaps the surprising thing is that this is surprising. Years of research into the brain have failed to reveal any central “command center.” Despite intensive examination, when we look for the seat of the self there is “no ‘there’ there.” We have a sense that “we” make decisions, and yet it’s clear that decisions are made before we are consciously aware of them and are only labeled as “our” decisions — “consciously” made — after they have taken place as events in the brain. Looking for the self is like trying to grasp mist.

There’s something profoundly distorted and disconcerting about this thing we call “the self.” And this is a point on which scientists and mystics — and by that I mean nothing more than “those who seek truth through reflection and introspection — can agree, even if the tools they use differ (although increasingly scientists are also using meditation to explore consciousness and the sense of self).

What is distorted about your sense of self? You’re not who you think you are. You’re not what you think you are. And this is not a point of abstruse philosophical interest, but a question that affects your life on a day-to-day, minute-by-minute level. It’s a question that affects your happiness and your ability to live a fulfilled life. It’s a question that affects your ability to love and be loved. It’s the central question of your life. If we don’t know who and what we are, how can we know how best to live our lives?

Albert Einstein, in a letter to a Rabbi trying to help his daughter adjust to a bereavement, wrote:

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole (of) nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.

The “inner security” Einstein talks about comes from seeing things as they really are, and from stripping away the “optical delusion of consciousness.” This book aims to help us, though a process of reflection, to transcend and liberate ourselves from delusion so that we can see ourselves more clearly as we really are, and to find a surer footing for our security than the shifting sands of misperception.

We make the assumption that we enjoy a some kind of separateness from the outside world, we make the assumption that we enjoy a degree of permanence, and we make the assumption that there is an “in here” that is clearly distinguishable from the “out there.” That there is a “me” separate from all the other “yous” that the “out there” contains.

These assumptions are integral to the way the mind works, are deeply unconscious, and create problems for us. A moment’s thought may reveal that we can’t exist independent of the world around us, that everything that constitutes the body and mind is impermanent, and yet we behave as if we are indeed permanent and separate. We interpret our experience to mean that there is a discrete boundary between self and other. We interpret our experience to mean that there is some kind of permanent, enduring core to what we call “the self.” But interpretation is not reality.

These assumptions are not superficial. They are powerfully rooted in the way we see the world, rooted in our language, and rooted in life-long patterns of thinking.

Our minds fool us on a fundamental level. But what, you may be thinking, is the problem? So what if I’m not as independent as I think I am, if I’m not as permanent as I assume? Why should I care?

That’s the question this book will try to answer. Together we’ll be looking at what it is to be human in this world, and we’ll see that there is no separateness and no permanence, and we’ll see what problems arise from our delusions.

If you’re at all like me you’re probably at some time walked downstairs in a state of mild distraction and been jarred to discover that there’s one fewer (or more) stair than you had assumed. The extra (or missing) step comes as a literal body blow. At other times you’ve probably, when your mind has been elsewhere, been driving and started to pull onto what you were convinced was an empty road only to find yourself, heart pounding, in a near-collision with another vehicle. False assumptions can be risky, and even fatal. The false assumptions that we make about the permanence and separateness of the self are likewise dangerous, and sometimes even more so, than these everyday collisions or near-collisions between assumption and all-too-hard fact.

According to the teaching of many spiritual traditions, the source of much of our suffering is a reification of the sense of self. We take our sense of self to mean that we exist independently of the world in which we live, to mean that we have interests that are separate from and even opposed to the interests of others.

I had a friend who was very ill with hepatitis. He’d resigned himself to dying, and then out of the blue came the chance of a liver transplant. He was quite literally given a new lease of life, and he said that everything had changed. He no longer worried about things like money. He simply enjoyed life. He’d let go of being angry — life was too short for such superficial concerns. When reality intrudes, perhaps because of a loss or an illness, and it becomes obvious that we are not in fact permanent and that our happiness does depend on others, we find that our lives change. Our perspectives shift: the heart opens, we find ourselves connecting more with others, appreciating the small things in life, not caring so much about what others think of us, pursuing long-abandoned dreams of doing those things we most love and most nourish us. Life begins again. Life ceases to be a humdrum routine and becomes an open field of potential. Life becomes more enjoyable. That’s what happens when we’re more in touch with the reality of our own impermanence and our interconnectedness.

And yet outside of such special circumstances, when things haven’t been shaken up by thoughts of impermanence, we tend to assume that even to think about such things is morbid and a bit of a downer. And why waste time thinking about gloomy, scary stuff like change and impermanence? There’s so much to be done in life: shopping, work, email to keep up with, news to digest, reports to write, errands to run, TV programs to catch up on. We avoid thinking about impermanence, and life becomes a gray, thin thing.

In the 2001 Tom Cruise movie Vanilla Sky, Cruise’s character, playboy David Aames, comes to realize that he’s been in suspended animation for 150 years and is trapped in a dream. He makes this discovery on top of an improbably tall building, apparently miles high, with the guidance of Edmund Ventura, a “Support Technician” from the company supervising Aames’s suspended animation, who is trying to guide Aames back to waking reality. He has previously, in his waking life, made the decision to awaken from this dream by facing his fear of heights. In order to wake up, Aames must leap from the top of the building. Also on the rooftop is Aames’ father figure, a warm, avuncular psychologist called McCabe, who has previously been helping Aames to figure out why he apparently murdered a lover. McCabe not only believes that what David Aames is experiencing is real, he believes that he himself is real. And he tries to dissuade Aames from taking his all-too-literal leap of faith:

MCCABE. David, don’t listen to him. You were right … It’s a setup! You can’t trust him.

VENTURA. Don’t feel bad for him, David. This winning man is your creation. It’s in his nature to fight for his existence, but he’s not real.

If Aames wakes up, then McCabe ceases to exist. He’s a fictional character, but even fictional characters want to continue their existence. So McCabe tries to talk David out of jumping.

Similarly, our fictional delusions don’t believe that they are delusions. And they don’t want us to know that they are delusions. If we wake up they die. They have a life of their own and they don’t want to lose that life. To take a less poetic view, once certain patterns of thought have been established in the brain, it can be hard to change them. Just as a river, having carved itself a deep gorge, is trapped flowing in a particular direction, so our thoughts, the more entrenched they are, tend to course in familiar patterns.

Many spiritual teachers in the past have suggested that our delusions act in a way that protect themselves, so that a self-sustaining pattern of deludedness is perpetuated in our minds. This is what we call the ego. The ego — our sense of a permanent, independent selfhood, doesn’t want us to wake up. It resists change. We think we’re permanent and separate. Some chance event reminds us we’re not and we feel alive again. Then we start to forget, and retreat into our sense of separateness once again, believing that that’s where happiness lies and that an awareness of impermanence is what leads to unhappiness. We go back to focusing on superficialities — is my hair getting grayer, do people really like me? — and we’ve lost any insight we’d previously gained

But these delusions, these distorted perceptions, although deep-rooted and resistant to change are not un-doable. Like David Aames we need to wake up from our delusions. And the principle means for waking up is reflection. To reflect is to examine our experience closely, to scrutinize our lives, ourselves, and our world, and to let reality collide, sometimes violently, with our assumptions.

Where our assumptions are not in accord with how things actually are — for example where we to some extent believe we are separate and permanent when we are actually interconnected and ever-changing — there will be conflict. In reflecting we consciously bring about conflict. And we keep doing this over and over, bringing our delusions up against reality, until something gives.

Reflection is not a mere intellectual activity. It’s not just a parade of words running through the mind. We rarely reflect when we read, for example, because all that’s happening is that words are crawling, ticker-tape fashion, over the mind’s surface. Reflection is not even the act of “thinking things through,” making connections between ideas. Reflection is an activity that involves imagination and emotion as well.

DH Lawrence expressed in a poem called “Thought” what reflection consists of.

Thought, I love thought.
But not the juggling and twisting of already existent ideas.
I despise that self-important game.
Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness,
Thought is the testing of statements on the touchstone of consciousness,
Thought is gazing onto the face of life, and reading what can be read,
Thought is pondering over experience, and coming to conclusion.
Thought is not a trick, or an exercise, or a set of dodges,
Thought is a man in his wholeness, wholly attending.

When we reflect we need to turn ideas into felt experiences and images. When we reflect we need to see how our words and images affect how we feel. We need to bring new ideas up against existing ones and honestly observe the honest collision of contradictions. Reflection involves an almost ruthless degree of self-examination, a scrutiny of the mind and heart. It involves taking a running jump from what is known and a willingness to leave behind the familiar and safe (that which shores up the ego), even if that leaves us with the terrifying feeling that we’re plummeting through space. But it can also be exhilarating and deeply rewarding as we make new discoveries, as we rearrange our inner world, letting got of stale and tired viewpoints and embracing new ways of seeing, as we find ourselves living in a new world — one that doesn’t follow the rules we’d assumed held sway — and as we realize that there are yet more discoveries to be made.

We rarely reflect while reading. One of the problems with books on spirituality is that they’re too often treated as if they were novels to be consumed — the ticker-tape of whole chapters passing unhindered through the mind, as it were “in one ear and out the other.” To reflect while reading it’s more useful to take in a little and then to pause in order to give ourselves a chance to turn ideas into experience, to “test statements on the touchstone of consciousness.” Reflection is a practice.

The “Juggling and twisting already existent ideas” is an activity of the ego — McCabe tying to help Aames deal with his nightmare while persuading him that he shouldn’t try to wake up.

This book is an opportunity to reflect, to become aware of and see past the distortions of the ego, to wake up.

We’ll be taking a traditional reflection from the Buddhist tradition — actually a series of six reflections — as a way of focusing the mind on what is, as a way of bringing our delusions up against reality. The practice we’ll be doing is called “The Six Elements,” and it’s a simple, sometimes profoundly unsettling, and often exhilarating.

The reflection comes from the spiritual tradition with which I’m most familiar — the tradition established by a man called Gautama, who you’ll likely know by his title, the Buddha, or the Awakened One.

The Six Element Practice is a reflective meditation designed to probe some of the unthinking assumptions we make about ourselves, about where we come from, where we’re going, and about what’s going on in between. It’s a practice that challenges assumptions we make about our own separateness, specialness, independence, and permanence. It’s a practice that prompts us to see ourselves as being part of a greater whole, as being fluid processes rather than static things. It’s a practice that challenges us to see ourselves as existing in an interconnected reality. It’s a practice that encourages humility.

As a Buddhist and a meditation teacher, I’m the first to recognize that meditation and Buddhism can be off-putting terms for many people. So, no, this isn’t a book that takes a mystical approach, at least not if you understand the word mysticism to mean, as some people do, “disappearing into an imaginary realm that has no connection with objective reality.” Objective reality is precisely what I’m interested in exploring — or at least the meeting of the mind with that objective reality. In fact we’ll be looking at a lot of science, seeing what researchers have revealed about what it is to be a human being. This book aims to be reflective. We’ll be looking closely at ourselves and the world we live in so that we can develop a more accurate sense of who we are. We won’t be trying to escape the world or objective reality, but to fully embrace them. Perhaps along the way we’ll find that our current understandings are distorted or even deluded. But you can judge that for yourself. Like sculptor’s block of marble, life will provide the working ground, while the form of the Six Element practice will suggest where we are to start carving. But reflection, and often science will furnish tools for bringing about change.

So this is not a mystical book. Nor is it a “Buddhist” one. Although I consider myself to be a Buddhist the aim here is not to teach Buddhism. We won’t even so much be exploring Buddhism as we will be using some useful ideas from the Buddhist tradition to give form to our exploration of the world. If we find anything in Buddhist teachings that contradicts science, it will be treated with great skepticism, if not discarded entirely. I have little respect for religious traditions that reject objective reality in favor of dogma.

In any event, Buddhism may not even be a very good term to describe the ideas that will be framing our exploration. If I may digress, Pythagoras was a religious teacher who believed that the underlying structure of world could best be understood in terms of numbers. However his attempts to understand the world mathematically were simply one part of a mystery religion that included a tough and sometimes idiosyncratic form of ethics, in which, for example, one is obliged to help a man pick up a burden but not to put one down. (Well, we wouldn’t like to encourage indolence, would we?) The point, however, is that although Pythagoras’ Theorem (the square of the hypotenuse of a triangle being equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides) came from a religious tradition, I doubt that many of us experienced much of a sense of a religious epiphany on learning in high school how to calculate the length of side c of a triangle, given the lengths of sides a and b. The tool is useful, even if the original religious framework is no longer of any practical appeal to us. The Six Element practice occupies a similar place. Although many westerners do find Buddhist teachings to be useful, not everyone does, and some who do have no desire to regard themselves as “Buddhists.” But the Six Element reflection offers, I believe, something of value to everyone, just as Pythagoras’ theorem is valid even if one discards its religious origins.

Pythagoras, incidentally, was the first person to have called himself a philosopher (or “lover of wisdom”) and perhaps that’s the best way to think of the Buddha. Think of an ordinary Indian man, 2,500 years ago, wearing something like a toga, living a life of reflection and introspection, looking closely at his experience, uncovering layer upon layer of delusion as he sought a more authentic view of the reality in which he (and we all) live, and as he figured out how best to live his life within that reality. In fact let’s not call him “The Buddha,” since this presupposes the validity of his followers’ assessment that he had attained some special state of realization (Buddha means “The Awakened One). Muhammed Ali may have been styled “The Greatest,” but it seems more unbiased simply to refer to him by his name. So from now on I’ll likewise simply refer to “The Spiritual Teacher Formerly Known as The Buddha” by his family name, which was Gautama. Perhaps this brings him down to earth and makes him seem less exotic and less of a “religious” figure.

Gautama wasn’t a god, or a prophet, but an introspective philosopher who attempted to live an ethical life and a life of intellectual integrity, based as much as possible on truths discoverable by the unaided mind: unaided, but not untrained. What we call “meditation” is a series of training exercises for the mind. Some of these exercises train us to still the mind so that we can focus undistractedly on whatever we’re paying attention to. Other exercises train us to relate to other beings compassionately. Yet others are reflective practices that help us to see “how things really are.”

The background to the practice is satisfyingly earthy and historically credible. At one time Gautama was wandering around the country called Magadha, in the fertile plains of what is now Bihar province in north-east India. At a town now called Rajgir — “King’s House” — on a flat plain beside an imposing ridge, he stopped for the night. He went to the house of a potter (his name was Bhaggava, which just means “potter”) and asked if he could spend the night in his workshop. As I said, this story is satisfyingly earthy. You’ll perhaps notice that Gautama had no entourage, human or divine, that there’s no report of his being surrounded by an aura, and that Bhaggava apparently didn’t even recognize his guest. The potter pointed out that there was already a homeless wanderer camping out in his shed, but that Gautama was welcome to stay if he didn’t mind being a little cramped.

Apparently Gautama was perfectly happy to share a hut with another wanderer, and perhaps he even looked forward to discussing matters of practical philosophy with his room mate. In this way Gautama met Pukkusati, another homeless wanderer.

The tradition of homeless wandering was a big thing in those days. Until not long before, the religious and philosophical role in society had been monopolized by the Brahmin class, who made their living by interpreting the ancient Vedic scriptures, charging for the sacrifices that would keep the rains coming at the right time and guarantee fruitful crops and a plentiful supply of sons, and generally keeping the other social classes in line. Following the rules of your social class and respecting the social and religious preeminence of the Brahmins was regarded as a religious duty. But at this time in history things were changing. Iron-age technology had arrived, allowing improved forest clearance and plowing. This in turn led to the creation of surpluses, an explosion of wealth and the rise of a powerful trading class. The iron-rimmed wheel allowed transport, trading, and the evolution of a mercantile, rather than a subsistence, economy. Society had been turned upside down, with the supposedly lowly traders and famers having immense worldly power. This wasn’t supposed to happen. The gods were supposed to look most favorably upon the Brahmins, rewarding them with spiritual and material blessings. Something was clearly wrong. The gods weren’t doing their job. The Brahmins had lost some of their credibility.

As was happening in Greece at almost the same moment, there was a general sense that the old religious ways didn’t have as much relevance any more. And there was also a new leisured class with the time to think about how life is best lived. Discontented with the religious status quo advocated by the Brahmins, the merchant class created a demand for new philosophical and religious outlooks. And in parallel with this development, many people had decided, like the hippies of the 1960s, to drop out and seek the truth. They took to living in the forests or the outskirts of society. Many begged for a living in order that their time not be taken up with the distracting task of earning a living. They spent their time meditating, reflecting, debating, and gathering followers.

So there came to be many different kinds of homeless wanderers out and about in India at that time, and the agriculturally rich area of Bihar would have been especially popular, given that there were plenty of huts to bunk in and an ample surplus of food for begging. Pukkusati, as it turned out, was a disciple of Gautama, although the two had never met and he had no idea who he was sharing accommodations with.

In status-conscious India, name can be everything, and Pukkusati’s name suggests he was from a lowly caste of refuse sweepers. To the orthodox Brahmins, Pukkusati would have been spiritually unclean (why would the Gods have allowed him to be born in a family of scavengers if not as a punishment for past bad deeds?) but to Gautama Pukkasati was just a a fellow wanderer. Part of his philosophy was that people should be judged by what they do and by their character, and not by their origins.

Having made their introductions, Gautama and Pukkusati began to talk philosophy. Clearly the senior of the pair in terms of spiritual experience, Gautama took the opportunity to outline some of his key spiritual teachings, including an exposition on the Six Elements.

Of course, by the time Bhaggava had had a good philosophical “going over” he realized that the person he was camping with was none other than the teacher whose discipline he followed. The story is, as mentioned, very down to earth. There’s a sense of a historical reality being presented — almost up to the end, that is, when we’re told Pukkusati goes out to collect the robes and bowl he needs for his full acceptance as an official follower of Gautama’s philosophy and is gored by a stray cow. I can’t help but have the feeling that this ending, along with Gautama’s prediction about Pukkusati’s future rebirth, was tacked on to provide a neat ending.

Be that as it may, let’s get an overview of the reflective practice that Gautama outlined for Pukkusati, the refuse-collector-turned philosophy student.

The six element practice is a systematic analysis of “the self” in which first the earth element — everything solid — within the body is examined. We then reflect on the earth element — again everything solid — in the outside world. We next reflect that everything solid within the body comes from the outside world and will return (or is currently returning) to that outside world; in other words there is in reality no “me” earth element and no “other” earth element. There is just one earth element, part of which we identify with so long as it is passing through this human form that we call “me.” Lastly, having connected with the flowing nature of the earth element, seeing it as being more like a river than a static thing — something that can’t be owned or held onto — we reflect, “This is not me. This is not mine. I am not this.”

This is the earth element taken as a reflective practice.

We repeat this exercise with the remaining elements:

• The water element, or all that is liquid within and outside the body
• The fire element, or the energy that allows metabolism
• The air element, or everything that is gaseous, whether internal or external
• The space element, or the form constituted by the physical elements
• The consciousness element, or the emergent property that arises from the other elements, by which the elements become conscious of themselves.

In each case we reflect on the element, seeing how it is a process rather than a thing.

These are the reflections we will be entering into in this book. The first four elements are familiar to just about everyone as part of our classical heritage. The idea of space and consciousness as elements may seem unusual, but when combined with the classical elements they offer a framework for looking at what it is to be human. We are matter (earth, water, air), and energy (fire), which has a particular form (space), and which provides the basis for a consciousness that then identifies the other five elements as a separate and enduring self.

So we’ll be looking at what constitutes “me,” both physically and psychologically. We’ll be looking at where the elements that constitute us come from and where they are going, so that we can see ourselves not as separate and permanent but rather as part of a continuous cycle of matter, energy, and even of consciousness. We’ll be looking at what it is to be a human being, what it means to have an identity: a sense of self. What does it mean to “be”?

Having reflected in this way, I believe our perspectives will have been altered. Just as it’s said that anyone who has been into space and seen the planet Earth in its entirety — in its fragile beauty, a tiny and precious ball of life and color floating in the bleak vastness of space, with its borderless landmasses and an atmosphere that knows no bounds — just as anyone who has seen the Earth in that way is unable to return to their former perspective, I believe your sense of yourself and of the world in which you live will never be the same after reflecting deeply on the six elements.

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