Written by Kaelasha Tyler
What is your self?
The idea I want to raise in this piece of writing is that our understanding of what a ‘self’ is, is deeply entwined with the fragmented state of the era in which we find ourselves and that it is the idea of ‘representation’ that links these two. I’ll explore the idea that spiritual practice may open up a different experience of selfhood, and one that speaks to core issues in the current era and that reaches beyond the scope of the postmodern or pseudo-modern experience.
Issues central to the contemporary Western culture such as identity, rights, liberties and even the pursuit of happiness all rest on the idea of the individual self. While many of these issues are current, the understanding of what a ‘self’ actually is, retains many unresolved and centuries old assumptions that continue to shape our era.
Beneath identity defining demographics such as class or race or sexuality, our culture still covertly understands ‘selfhood’ as being a unit of enclosed subjectivity, within or associated with a body and somehow existentially separated from the world ‘out there’. It is with this definition of self that the idea of ‘representation’ looms large. If the self is essentially an enclosed bubble of subjectivity, then our only connection to any reality beyond ourselves is through somehow projecting or representing that reality within the interiority of our own mind, like a multi-sensory film. It is this idea of representation arising from the perceived gap between our ‘self-consciousness’ and any broader reality, that generates many of the unsatisfying features of the contemporary experience of self.
Given this perceived gap between human subjectivity and any reality ‘out there’, a driving concern throughout the history of Western thought had been to discover and know Truth or Reality, at both a worldly level and fundamental philosophical or spiritual level. However, from around the 19th Century onwards with the philosophy of Nietzsche and others, confidence in ‘Truth’ began to crumble. In the place of this search came a crushing realisation that there is no justification for a belief in a fundamental ‘Truth’ at all. As enclosed subjectivity, humans are viewed as incapable of stepping outside of their own internal representations to ever establish direct apprehension of any such essential reality.
Because of this, the current era from the late modern through to postmodern or pseudo-modern, has seen the crumbling of monolithic grand narratives that proclaim access to a single universal Truth. In their wake, an acceptance of many different views and narratives and ways of being has arisen. Moreover, thinkers motivated to address the apparent dichotomy between self and world, have argued for a contextual view of selfhood, now defined by environment and culture.
However, despite the contextuality with which current culture defines self as white or coloured or working class or middle class etc, existentially we can observe these definitions of self to continue to rest in a view of fundamental isolated subjectivity- just as previous eras had done. For example, current thinkers would almost universally deny that you could touch reality through introspection, in this way leaving selfhood implicitly isolated.
Without any sense of grounding Truth that we can hold onto, the contemporary era is left questioning and full of doubt and cynicism about what is real and what is fake. Terms such as ‘post-truth’ are being bandied about. Still believing we are trapped within the subjective representations of our own mind, but never able to directly access the underlying reality, we suspect that we contain nothing at all that is real, just regurgitated thoughts and feelings. Then, we seek incessant activity in order to avoid stillness and the emptiness it could reveal; double or triple screening becomes the norm, and did you know that Netflix can be streamed at double speed to fit more in?
Further, unconsciously believing we are left only with empty subjective representations of the world, but without any genuine connection to the Real, the contemporary experience compensates with fragile hyper exaggerated commitments to online pseudo-realities, tending towards conspiracy theory or religious extremism. The late modern and postmodern experience grappled with the ways in which the self is entirely enclosed within the mental domain of its own representations, forever separated from any underlying reality. The current era elaborates on the spiralling ramifications of this, as we devolve into obsessive online click-bate distraction and a deep cynicism regarding expertise, authority and truth. Long since departed is any sense that we could speak with the gods (i.e. directly connect to the Real) or be genuinely one with nature, as we suspect other ages may have been able to in some way.
In this way, the idea we have of what a ‘self’ is retains the sense that our only access to ‘reality’ is through representation, and this is closely associated with the positive and negative conditions of the era in which we live. Despite viewing selfhood as deeply culturally contextual and maintaining a commitment to a multiplicity of perspectives, we are still plagued by the ramifications of selfhood defined as isolated subjectivity.
Is there any possible movement from this position of pseudo modernity- empty, passionately confused and inauthentic? I have become fascinated with the question of whether the experience of spiritual practice can speak directly to this contemporary malaise in some way.
The word ‘Yoga’ derives from the root Sanskrit verb yunj, which means ‘to unify’. Simplistically this is interpreted suggesting that yoga (which incorporates a range of meditative and postural practices) seeks to achieve a union between God and self. However, a more nuanced understanding suggests that yogic and meditative practices effect a unification of a duality that plays a core role in structuring the ordinary experience of selfhood. This experience of selfhood is structured around the dualities of mind-body, self-other, within-without. It is just these perceived dichotomies that necessitate the idea of representation playing an essential role in the structure of human experience. Addressing these dualities, spiritual practice address many of the existential issues of the contemporary era.
Through spiritual practice, you can learn to skilfully lose control and thereby discover your existence in ways that do not bear the stamp of your own mind, and there is transcendence in this. Spiritual practice can reveal your own consciousness to have a source and agency that exists outside of your own self-identity. That is, through spiritual practice, consciousness can be experienced as a wave of momentum that can reveal itself to you, and that is essential to your self but somehow outside of your own self-agency and identity. Unlike all other forms of experience available to postmodern or pseudo-modern selfhood, this type of experience is non-representational because the gap between the perceiver and the object of perception has dissolved or diminished.
Yet the quality of the experience extends beyond mere subjectivity because consciousness reveals itself in these moments as having a life of its own that is autonomous to our mind and outside of our limited sense of identity. It is the meeting of these two (self-ness and other-ness) within the crucible of your own awareness that is transcendence and allows an ‘at one-ness’ with the Real that I believe does supersede the scope of the current postmodern and pseudo-modern experience. Feeling that we have touched something existentially real can allow a loosening of our grip on external markers of identity, which remain anchored in isolated individuality. In this case, it seems that introspection need not be a case of looking within the no exit container of secular materialism. If this is true, is this a way to break open and transcend the self in a way that responses to core questions and wounds of current times?
On the other hand, is the experience I talk of merely a variation of an internal subjective experience, and therefore no real transcendence of self or the existential conditions of the era at all? Does this experience literally reach beyond your self? and what would that even mean? There is no proof or evidence that I know of that such an experience literally comes from outside of our own nervous system.
Nevertheless, I do know that through spiritual practice it is possible to discover a quality of consciousness that genuinely transcends and goes beyond your own self-identity. This is the experience of surpassing the representational mode of experience and coming directly in contact with something real that is outside of your ‘self’, yet also essential to your existence. In this sense, it is possible to ‘talk with the gods’-perhaps not literally, but in the poetic and metaphoric sense that this phrase suggests the taking of a thirsty breath, the revival of hope and the meeting of a deep human need.