When Everything Is Me, What Is This Me?
Cuando todo soy yo, ¿qué es este yo?
A question about the fear that nondual teachings imply a lonely solipsism, and how contemplating the true nature of the self resolves the paradox.
When Everything Is Me, What Is This Me?
A question about the fear that nondual teachings imply a lonely solipsism, and how contemplating the true nature of the self resolves the paradox.
I've been finding myself concerned lately with this pointing that there's only me in the universe, and that when I'm talking to someone, I can only ever be talking to myself. I can only ever be interacting with myself. Everyone says awakening is great, but that feels kind of lonely. I don't know if I would like that.
That's a belief system, because what matters there is: what are you referring to as "me"? What is the nature of this me, this I?
Solipsism as a wrong view
What you're describing is solipsism, where the "I" is real in the way we normally interpret it to be, and then everything is that, and there's nobody else, only I. That is a belief system. A lot of the pointing in more contemporary nonduality or spirituality can be confused with solipsism, and there are probably people who are actually pointing to solipsism without recognizing the true nature. They haven't really awakened.
You are correctly assessing it as problematic, as something you wouldn't want, because we shouldn't want that. In Buddhism it would be called a wrong view. A view is basically a perspective, a paradigm, but it's an intellectual map.
Multiplicity without separation
There is something that could be expressed in words close to that, but it's very different. It's a world apart. It doesn't feel isolated, because there is still room for multiplicity. There is room for something here that is experiencing differently from something that you, for example, are experiencing. There is, in a sense, an acknowledgment of the difference between my universe and your universe. They're both real and valid, but they're not separate.
The trick has to do with this: when everything is me, what is this me? What is its nature? We project the false self, the illusory separate self, onto the world, onto everybody, onto everything. You are appropriately rejecting that view.
So it's like we're all aspects of the one being.
Yes, but you're also the one being.
We are also the one being. Not just a portion of it, but the whole thing.
The paradox that defeats the mind
Yes. That's why it's tricky: whenever you define what we are or what I am, if you say "we're all aspects of the one being," you're rejecting the opposite statement, which is "there is one being and I am that one being." When it's expressed in language, you have to say both. Even when you're reflecting on it without language, there can still be a mental paradigm.
In the paradox of "I am this body-mind, but I am also the one being that is everything, everywhere," there is a question: then what am I? In that mental short circuit, if you can contemplate both sides, something can start to happen. You can start to see something beyond what the mind can map. In a sense, you can start to see from beyond, or prior to, the mind, without the filter of the mind. You can start to see the filter as a filter.
This is what koans are meant to do: to create these mental traps or mental short circuits. The paradox of "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" or "what is mu?" or "what was your face before you were born?"
It takes you to a realm that you can't figure out, basically.
Yes, to a point where the mind cannot grasp, the mind cannot map. You come to an edge where, in a sense, you are posed with the question: what am I really? Something feels like you are going to end if you keep inquiring, because we can only identify with the mind. When that which is looking starts to look from prior to the mind, that which I thought I am comes to an end. It could be temporary, a glimpse, a momentary thing. But the body-mind will likely start to get activated with sensations of ending.
So just don't even bother trying to figure it out with the mind. Just trust the process.
Contemplate whether the "me" is real
Yes. And for example, with this idea that everything is me, that you can only ever be interacting with yourself, and that feels lonely: contemplate this "myself," this "me." What if that me, that myself, isn't real?
Right. What if that me is something much grander than I'm taking it to be?
Not even God, because then you can start to imagine another thing, something you could label as grander or bigger. Go in the other direction: what if that me, that myself, which you are referring to, isn't real? And by "real," I mean it doesn't have an independent nature.
The meaning of "illusory"
Let me be more clear about what I mean by "real." We talk about illusory and real, but the terms come from Sanskrit, and the way we're using them here is slightly different from ordinary usage. Something that is illusory is something whose true nature isn't that thing.
Say you're looking at a golden ring. You would think the ring is real. But I would say the ring is illusory in this sense: you melt the gold and the ring is gone. The gold is real. It's a metaphor.
Something appears to be like a ring, but it's not real in that specific sense. This doesn't mean it's not there. In the West, we think of something illusory as not really being there at all, like a mirage: you see what looks like water, but there is no water; it's actually a reflection of the sky. When the Sanskrit meaning is brought into the West, people think "the world isn't real" means there's nothing there. But it's illusory in a different sense. It's real. It's just not what it appears to be. Its essence isn't the thing in itself.
Go toward the emptiness, not toward a grander map
Back to when you refer to "myself": everything is myself, and when I relate to others, I'm only relating to myself. This "myself" that you're referring to, contemplate the possibility that it's not real, that which you're referring to. Instead of trying to create a map of how it could be grander or vaster, go the other way. Go toward it, to find its empty nature, its illusory nature. And then the paradox will resolve itself.