Steve Byrnes’s Shortform

Steven Byrnes

This is a special post for quick takes by Steven Byrnes. Only they can create top-level comments. Comments here also appear on the Quick Takes page and All Posts page.

I’m intrigued by the reports (including but not limited to the Martin 2020 “PNSE” paper) that people can “become enlightened” and have a radically different sense of self, agency, etc.; but friends and family don’t notice them behaving radically differently, or even differently at all. I’m trying to find sources on whether this is true, and if so, what’s the deal. I’m especially interested in behaviors that (naïvely) seem to centrally involve one’s self-image, such as “applying willpower” or “wanting to impress someone”. Specifically, if there’s a person whose sense-of-self has dissolved / merged into the universe / whatever, and they nevertheless enact behaviors that onlookers would conventionally put into one of those two categories, then how would that person describe / conceptualize those behaviors and why they occurred? (Or would they deny the premise that they are still exhibiting those behaviors?) Interested in any references or thoughts, or email / DM me if you prefer. Thanks in advance!

(Edited to add: Ideally someone would reply: “Yeah I have no sense of self, and also I regularly do things that onlookers describe as ‘applying willpower’ and/or ‘trying to impress someone’. And when that happens, I notice the following sequence of thoughts arising: [insert detailed description]”.)

[also posted on twitter where it got a bunch of replies including one by Aella.]

Some meditators say that before you can get a good sense of non-self you first have to have good self-confidence. I think I would tend to agree with them as it is about how you generally act in the world and what consequences your actions will have. Without this the support for the type B that you're talking about can be very hard to come by.

Otherwise I do really agree with what you say in this comment.

There is a slight disagreement with the elaboration though, I do not actually think that makes sense. I would rather say that the (A) that you're talking ab... (read more)

4[anonymous]2y

No. Overall, I would say that my self-concept is closer to what a physicalist ontology implies is mundanely happening - a neural network, lacking a singular 'self' entity inside it, receiving sense data from sensors and able to output commands to this strange, alien vessel (body). (And also I only identify myself with some parts of the non-mechanistic-level description of what the neural network is doing). I write in a lot more detail below. This isn't necessarily written at you in particular, or with the expectation of you reading through all of it. 1. Non-belief in self-as-body (A) I see two kinds of self-as-body belief. The first is looking in a mirror, or at a photo, and thinking, "that [body] is me." The second is controlling the body, and having a sense that you're the one moving it, or more strongly, that it is moving because it is you (and you are choosing to move). I'll write about my experiences with the second kind first. The way a finger automatically withdraws from heat does not feel like a part of me in any sense. Yesterday, I accidentally dropped a utensil and my hands automatically snapped into place around it somehow, and I thought something like, "woah, I didn't intend to do that. I guess it's a highly optimized narrow heuristic, from times where reacting so quickly was helpful to survival". I experimented a bit between writing this, and I noticed one intuitive view I can have of the body is that it's some kind of machine that automatically follows such simple intents about the physical world (including intents that I don't consider 'me', like high fear of spiders). For example, if I have motivation and intent to open a window, then the body just automatically moves to it and opens it without me really noticing that the body itself (or more precisely, the body plus the non-me nervous/neural structure controlling it) is the thing doing that - it's kind of like I'm a ghost (or abstract mind) with telekinesis powers (over nearby objects), but t

4Kaj_Sotala2y

Great description. This sounds very similar to some of my experiences with non-dual states.

Steve Byrnes’s Shortform

5

Ω 2

Steve Byrnes’s Shortform

5

Ω 2