I am of the opinion that the self is never really anihilated, but rather, takes a more proportionate status in the structure of personhood after the transcendent has opened to awareness.
Instead of being the total identity, the sense of “I and mine” becomes just part of the superficial personality, in contrast to the unbounded field that has been found to permeate everything, both inner and outer.
So in a way, the self has indeed ceased to exist, in the sense that it once was seen as the totality of one’s identity, and now is seen as just part of the mechanism by which one is incorporated in a body and experiencing a world.
In that state, the experience is interpreted either as as the person’s having no real existence (Buddhism) or as the person having merged with/become the great, cosmic Existence (Hinduism). Regardless of which way the experience is interpreted, the effect is a profound sense of liberation and freedom.
For me, it was a Buddhist monk teaching a Zen class who pointed out that the trees outside the window were suffering due to my personal lack of enlightenment. Eventually it sunk in that it was that part of my own mind that differentiated between me and the trees that was suffering. Jim’s quote about “to the last blade of grass” reminded me of that. Buddhist and Taoist teachings have never seemed quite so mysterous since.
See, what I think is that all sorts of things are happening,
but they aren’t happening to anybody. Thankfully.
Also: Some of us would be nice people if we existed;
but if, like me, you would be a real stinker,
well, the thought that you don’t exist
is consoling.
I thought I was obscure!
Well, there’s more work to do, I see,
plenty more. You want incomprehensible?
Stick with me, kid, you’ll get plenty
of incomprehensible.
There is a story that when Heidegger was writing
something, he would give it to his grad students
to read, and if they understood it, he would
rewrite.
Jim, have you ever (tried to) read Science And Health With Key To The Scriptures?
That is the most insane book I have ever touched, bar none. It has been edited by Mary Baker Eddy, various people she picked, and her church (since her death) multiple dozens of times, but I cannot understand a single word of it.
She makes Martin Buber seem like a native English speaker!
I adore Mark Twain’s Christian Science, which attacks her book. It’s so mean to Mary Baker Eddy, but so hilarious at the same time.
“It is the first time since the dawn-days of Creation that a Voice has gone crashing through space with such placid and complacent confidence and command.”
VIENNA 1899.
This last summer, when I was on my way back to Vienna from the Appetite- Cure in the mountains, I fell over a cliff in the twilight, and broke some arms and legs and one thing or another, and by good luck was found by some peasants who had lost an ass, and they carried me to the nearest habitation, which was one of those large, low, thatch-roofed farm-houses, with apartments in the garret for the family, and a cunning little porch under the deep gable decorated with boxes of bright colored flowers and cats; on the ground floor a large and light sitting-room, separated from the milch-cattle apartment by a partition; and in the front yard rose stately and fine the wealth and pride of the house, the manure-pile. That sentence is Germanic, and shows that I am acquiring that sort of mastery of the art and spirit of the language which enables a man to travel all day in one sentence without changing cars.
There was a village a mile away, and a horse doctor lived there, but there was no surgeon. It seemed a bad outlook; mine was distinctly a surgery case. Then it was remembered that a lady from Boston was summering in that village, and she was a Christian Science doctor and could cure anything. So she was sent for. It was night by this time, and she could not conveniently come, but sent word that it was no matter, there was no hurry, she would give me “absent treatment” now, and come in the morning; meantime she begged me to make myself tranquil and comfortable and remember that there was nothing the matter with me. I thought there must be some mistake.
“Did you tell her I walked off a cliff seventy-five feet high?”
“Yes.”
“And struck a boulder at the bottom and bounced?”
“Yes.”
“And struck another one and bounced again?”
“Yes.”
“And struck another one and bounced yet again?”
“Yes.”
“And broke the boulders?”
“Yes.”
“That accounts for it; she is thinking of the boulders. Why didn’t you tell her I got hurt, too?”
“I did. I told her what you told me to tell her: that you were now but an incoherent series of compound fractures extending from your scalp-lock to your heels, and that the comminuted projections caused you to look like a hat-rack.”
“And it was after this that she wished me to remember that there was nothing the matter with me?”
“Those were her words.”
“I do not understand it. I believe she has not diagnosed the case with sufficient care. Did she look like a person who was theorizing, or did she look like one who has fallen off precipices herself and brings to the aid of abstract science the confirmations of personal experience?”
In her compassion she almost smiled. She would have smiled if there were any such thing as a smile.
Great line. It reminds me of Jim, but in that case it would go, “In his compassion he almost smiled. He would have smiled if there were any such thing as him.”
I’m going to bed now, but I must read the whole thing as soon as possible.
When he discusses her book in depth, it’s helpful to have a copy of Science And Health nearby so you can reference it and see for yourself what it says. I did that when I first read it.
I wonder if, to a truly enlightened being (were one to exist), our speculations would seem similar to a 3-year old describing what daddy does at work. Some 3-year olds are pretty bright.
“You may well say it, sir. Yet it is but the truth This American lady, our revered and sacred Founder, is distinctly referred to, and her coming prophesied, in the twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse; she could not have been more plainly indicated by St. John without actually mentioning her name.”
“How strange, how wonderful!”
“I will quote her own words, from her Key to the Scriptures: ‘The twelfth chapter of the Apocalypse has a special suggestiveness in connection with this nineteenth century.’ There–do you note that? Think–note it well.”
“But–what does it mean?”
"Listen, and you will know. I quote her inspired words again: 'In the opening of the Sixth Seal, typical of six thousand years since Adam, there is one distinctive feature which has special reference to the present age. Thus:
"‘Revelation xii. I. And there appeared a great wonder in heaven–a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of twelve stars.’
"That is our Head, our Chief, our Discoverer of Christian Science-- nothing can be plainer, nothing surer. And note this:
"‘Revelation xii. 6. And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she had a place prepared of God.’
“That is Boston. I recognize it, madam. These are sublime things, and impressive; I never understood these passages before; please go on with the–with the–proofs.”
The horse-doctor came, a pleasant man and full of hope and professional
interest in the case. In the matter of smell he was pretty aromatic–in
fact, quite horsy–and I tried to arrange with him for absent treatment,
but it was not in his line, so, out of delicacy, I did not press it. He
looked at my teeth and examined my hock, and said my age and general
condition were favorable to energetic measures; therefore he would give
me something to turn the stomach-ache into the botts and the cold in the
head into the blind staggers; then he should be on his own beat and would
know what to do. He made up a bucket of bran-mash, and said a dipperful
of it every two hours, alternated with a drench with turpentine and
axle-grease in it, would either knock my ailments out of me in twenty-four
hours, or so interest me in other ways as to make me forget they were on
the premises. He administered my first dose himself, then took his
leave, saying I was free to eat and drink anything I pleased and in any
quantity I liked. But I was not hungry any more, and did not care for
food.
I took up the Christian Science book and read half of it, then took a
dipperful of drench and read the other half. The resulting experiences
were full of interest and adventure. All through the rumblings and
grindings and quakings and effervescings accompanying the evolution of
the ache into the botts and the cold into the blind staggers I could note
the generous struggle for mastery going on between the mash and the
drench and the literature; and often I could tell which was ahead, and
could easily distinguish the literature from the others when the others
were separate, though not when they were mixed; for when a bran-mash and
an eclectic drench are mixed together they look just like the Apodictical
Principle out on a lark, and no one can tell it from that. The finish
was reached at last, the evolutions were complete, and a fine success,
but I think that this result could have been achieved with fewer
materials. I believe the mash was necessary to the conversion of the
stomach-ache into the botts, but I think one could develop the blind
staggers out of the literature by itself; also, that blind staggers
produced in this way would be of a better quality and more lasting than
any produced by the artificial processes of the horse-doctor.
