On the existence of an individual self
Author: Ronald Engert
Category: Spiritual Cultures, Vedas
Issue No.: 48
This essay is an examination of the idea in Buddhism and Advaita that the self is an illusion. In the original Vedic tradition, spiritual reality involves individual persons, of which God is the supreme individual person. With this foundation, the structure of this world is revealed to be as real as that of the hereafter.
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Summary
In the non-dual traditions of Advaita and Buddhism, there is no concept of an individual self. Within a spiritual consciousness, therefore, a dissolution of the ego, or self, would be expected. The spiritual sphere is considered formless and empty. Within the Indian traditions, however, there is also the tradition of bhakti (love of God), in which a distinction is made between false and right ego. The right ego is our authentic self. Our spiritual reality is that of an eternal individual personality in an eternal loving relationship with Goddess-God. The being’s proper destiny is service to God. This, however, must not be understood as an escape from the world, but as a holographic, fractal structure, in that the living being in its human form of existence is not wrong or false, but in its connection with God is fundamentally good out of itself. In this total embedding in the divine reality, human relationships are also healed, first and foremost, however, the relationship to oneself.
In a personal understanding of spiritual reality, all subjects enter individually and irreducibly into both material and spiritual reality. We arrive at a multi-valued logic, in the total manifestation at an n-valued one (n = the set of natural numbers). All levels of human existence are integrated and are real, also in the spiritual dimension. This includes sexuality, which is no longer the stronghold of evil, but the most intimate and noble connection with Goddess-God.
The spiritual schools of Buddhism and Indian Advaita assume that the ego or individual self is an illusion. The argumentation is that the undoubted suffering of the living being in this world comes from dualism. Individual self means the dualism of I and non-I, and so the conclusion is, only through the idea of a separate self does suffering arise. In enlightenment we realize that this little ego, this individual self is an illusion. The end of suffering is the realization that “there is no one at home.”
Around this core hypothesis, an immense array of logical and intellectual arguments is brought into the field to explain the contradiction. How must an ultimate reality be created if there is no duality? The argumentation states, for example, that any kind of individuality implies a form and is a demarcation, thus creating separation. Separation and form are generally seen as something bad. The solution in Buddhism is “Shunyata”, emptiness. Accordingly, there is no self-existent substance, no inherent identity. In Advaita, the matter is somewhat different. Here the solution is to start from an undivided, formless One, which is finally expressed by the motto “All is one”. There is only one great Self with which we merge in enlightenment. An individual personality in both cases is maya, illusion.
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Is the absolute only emptiness and a nothingness?
However, it is not to be seen why a form or a border per se should be a characteristic of material worlds and why this should not be possible in a spiritual reality. According to the Bhaktivedanta philosophy1 the matter is different: There is a difference between a material and a spiritual form. In the spiritual reality there are eternal individual persons – Sanskrit: purusha – who have a spiritual form2. This form is not a limitation or a hindrance or an expression of illusion, but a direct manifestation of the inner being of that person. The irreducible reality consists of persons who are in relationships with each other.
Everything that exists in the material, relative world also exists in the spiritual, absolute world.
These relationships contain activity, actions. In essence, they are games that manifest out of an unintentional joy. In this spiritual reality, we also find Goddess and God having an intimate, very confidential, “private” relationship with each other. Around them there are familiar friends who participate in the games of the divine couple. The divine couple is characterized by flawless beauty, great intelligence, wit, love, as well as numerous other qualities. They perform eternal blissful games. For example, this Supreme Personality of Godhead is known as a gifted flute player. In addition, there is singing and dancing, feasting together, sporting activities, games of hide and seek, teasing, and of course, as the most central and intimate aspect, erotic games.
These are not games in the sense of sarcasm, irony or cynicism, but games of joy and love. It is the only consequence of asking the question, “What do we do when we are liberated?” The answer is clear: we play.When there is nothing left to do, no duty, no liberation, no necessity, we are free and unbound. However, the soul retains a taste for moving and being in exchange. To exist is to be perceived. Only in the intersubjective relationship the soul recognizes itself and enjoys its being.
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Everything that exists in the material, relative world also exists in the spiritual, absolute world. It would make no sense if there were something here that did not exist in the spiritual world. This would imply that this world contained more than the hereafter. However, a perfect spiritual reality, however given, would have to be defined by being the most comprehensive and complete reality of all. A reality that contains everything in perfection. Therefore, it is natural to assume that everything that exists here in conditional reality also exists in a perfect or all-good variant in spiritual reality. This worldly reality becomes explicable in its fullness and variety when we know that in the spiritual reality there are the same components, namely individual beings, relations between these beings, feelings and actions.
In this way, on both levels of reality, there is also an ego. In the bhakti tradition, we speak of false ego and real ego, illusory ego and authentic self. The inner essence of spiritual reality is that individual beings contact and play with each other by means of their soul essence. The Vedic expression “sat-cid-ananda” means eternal, full of knowledge and all-blissful. The purpose of existence is to experience joy and happiness.
This article has also been published on the German Website: https://www.tattva.de/wir-sind-alle-ewige-personen/
