Atman and Anatman | An end to the conflict between Self and no-self

Let's clear up a misunderstanding that has become quite common now. This teaching of the "no self".

You'll hear things like there's experience but no experiencer, sounds but no one listening, and that experience is all there is. There is a very fundamental misunderstanding in these teachings.

They do not lead to wisdom. In fact, if all the attention is given to the experiences, these teachings are leading directly away from the Truth. But seeing through such statements is not hard. It just takes a bit of honesty.

Say someone comes to you and says, "Experience is all there is! There is no experiencer."

Okay, which experience are you talking about? The one talking to you, is referring to a local and subjective experience that you have no access to in this moment. This is what is most real from that standpoint.

So you can say to this person, "So you're referring to your own experience. This is what you're declaring real."

What about all the other experience in this moment, completely outside of this reference point? How about the experience in the room next door, the earth worms in the ground, or life on another planet. Is it just as real as your own experience?

And if there's a bit of honesty, and this is not answered theoretically, the direct answer is no! This experience is more real than all the other experiences that can be imagined to be taking place right now.

So, all this talk of experience being all there is, is pointing to a specific individual stream of experience. This person may avoid using the word "me" or "mine" due to all the teachings they've heard, but they're not referring to anything but a local and limited experience.

And to consider your experience as more real and more important than all the other experiences taking place even as we speak, that, exactly that, is the standpoint of the ego! That is the false standpoint. The individual personal self. The one that is supposed to not exist.

All these teachings that depend on being very careful about not using certain words, but they are exactly the same as an egotistical standpoint.

At the extreme they even become the same as Solipsism; taking only your own stream of experience to be Reality. This is not at all the insight of Anatta.

To wave your hands vaguely and say, "This is all there is!" is not wisdom. Because the "this" is not pointing to what is fundamentally real.

This is granting reality to forms; transient forms, and denying reality to what is actually understood at the moment of Enlightenment.

Such a perspective may be fine when things are going well. When the experiences are fine and not too unpleasant this kind of approach may even improve life, because you think you've understood something. But when life takes a turn for the worse, when the experiences are the suffering, then what?

Denying the experiencer does not mean an understanding of Nonduality. Because experience in itself is dualistic. There is hot and cold, pleasure and pain, consciousness and unconsciousness.

And from the stance that all there is is experience, how will you face the moment of death?

This belief is in fact a denial of Reality. It's turning into just another religion.

Experience in itself comes in infinite variety, and the insight and wisdom of the sages is not coming from denying the experiencer and reifying one particular stream of experience. It comes from going back to the Source.

The Source where experience begins.

You see, the teaching of Anatta; the no-self, seems to be a course correction to what had happened at that point in time. The Atman; the Self, had been taken to the point of being some deity; all these concepts of God and so on. And the no-self helps adjust for that.

But the actual Truth resolves this apparent conflict between Atman and Anatman. The Self and the no-self.

Both are true! The Self is the no-self.

Your original face before you were even born. The Self is that "nothing" that the mind balks at. The Emptiness that evades all attempts at observation.

But this no-self is only a "void" from that position of taking experience as the norm. As a starting point. From taking the position that experience is all there is, the Self is cast as this void.

But if you dare to go to the Source; really cut through this idea and belief of being an individual self, and really see that all experience is transient and passing phenomena, local and limited and not what is truly real, then you're no longer taking the position that experience is all there is.

Now you're giving up this transient identity. Truly giving it up. This small self built around these local experiences.

And when that deconstruction has truly completed, you find that you're indistinguishable, inseparable, from what the mind considers the void; that no-self. That this is the Self.

And it is in no way an empty, desolate, nothing. This is the basis, the fundamental Reality underlying all streams of experience. What is timeless. Changeless.

In this context I will read an excerpt from Nisargadatta's dialogues. It is from chapter 23 in the book "I am That". It starts like this, with Nisargadatta speaking:

"You're all drenched for it is raining hard. In my world it is always fine weather. There is no night or day, no heat or cold.

No worries beset me there, nor regrets. My mind is free of thoughts, for there are no desires to slave for."

A questioner asks, "Are there two worlds?"

"Your world is transient, changeful. My world is perfect, changeless.

You can tell me what you like about your world — I shall listen carefully, even with interest, yet not for a moment shall I forget that your world is not, that you are dreaming."

"What distinguishes your world from mine?"

"My world has no characteristics by which it can be identified. You can say nothing about it. I am my world. My world is myself.

It is complete and perfect. Every impression is erased, every experience — rejected. I need nothing, not even myself, for myself I cannot lose."

"Not even God?"

"All these ideas and distinctions exist in your world; in mine there is nothing of the kind. My world is single and very simple."

"Nothing happens there?"

"Whatever happens in your world, only there it has validity and evokes response.

In my world nothing happens."

"The very fact of your experiencing your own world implies duality inherent in all experience."

"Verbally — yes. But your words do not reach me. Mine is a non-verbal world.

In your world the unspoken has no existence. In mine — the words and their contents have no being. In your world nothing stays, in mine — nothing changes. My world is real, while yours is made of dreams."

"Yet we are talking."

"The talk is in your world. In mine — there is eternal silence. My silence sings, my emptiness is full, I lack nothing. You cannot know my world until you are there."

"It seems as if you alone are in your world."

"How can you say alone or not alone, when words do not apply? Of course, I am alone for I am all."

"Are you ever coming into our world?"

"What is coming and going to me? These again are words.

I am. Whence am I to come from and where to go?"

"Of what use is your world to me?"

"You should consider more closely your own world, examine it critically and, suddenly, one day you'll find yourself in mine."

"What do we gain by it?"

"You gain nothing. You leave behind what is not your own and find what you have never lost — your own being."

This amazing dialogue goes on for a bit more. I will leave a link in the description to the full chapter. But let's end it for here today.

Thank you for listening.