The “I” versus the Suffixive Identity: Understanding the Soul/Ātman
Here is the problem with “I” and “me”: implicitness.
Self-identification in any explicate sense is impossible because things just keep happening. As soon as you pin down this or that part of your self, therein a new aspect of you is created and needs definition, and then another aspect is created, and another, infinitely. So when we say “me” what we really mean is “what I have been or done.” It’s so abstruse that we simply give up and take the implicate as concrete and move on. This reification creates a psychological hiccup that prevents us from making any actions concordant with reality as such.
What we are contemporarily looking for with self-definition is the comprehension of the present moment because, as explained above,
what I am > what I was
Therefore we must find away to come to grips with this indefinable, eternal “now” which is the proper source of our selves.
So, then, to get back on the right track-the one which produces the best ontological result-we must see “me” as both the implied identity and the non-being that precedes all happening and identification. Doing so necessarily includes the Absolute itself as part of this identity because we are inherently non-beings before we can “be” as such.
This non-being is the eternal aspect of the self that has been described in Tradition as “soul” or “Ātman”: that which is most like God the Eternal or Bráhman, the all-pervading soul of the universe. It is both the source of our experience and thus our knowledge of our selves and others, and the nexus to that which is beyond experience.
If it is easier to wrap your mind around, think of non-being as a point that represents the present in the middle of a time line where both ends extend infinitely in polar directions. The present point itself neither goes forward nor backward, doesn’t begin or end; yet without it past and future would have no distinction and thus no reality. You could also think of it as the verb suffix or adjective suffix “-ing”: “you” aren’t the sneeze itself, “you” are the sneezing; not the dancer but the dancing.
Aside from the poetic aesthetic of this point of view, which we could effectively call the Suffixive Identity, one is afforded the opportunity to go full circle in the way they understand themselves. It is easy to submit that “the self is an illusion” and cut the journey off at the base; but to understand the parameters and limitations of this illusory state and from there recommit your understanding of reality accordingly is a transcendent process, like moving one full circle up a spiral.
-- Shayne
Self-identification in any explicate sense is impossible because things just keep happening. As soon as you pin down this or that part of your self, therein a new aspect of you is created and needs definition, and then another aspect is created, and another, infinitely. So when we say “me” what we really mean is “what I have been or done.” It’s so abstruse that we simply give up and take the implicate as concrete and move on. This reification creates a psychological hiccup that prevents us from making any actions concordant with reality as such.
What we are contemporarily looking for with self-definition is the comprehension of the present moment because, as explained above,
what I am > what I was
Therefore we must find away to come to grips with this indefinable, eternal “now” which is the proper source of our selves.
So, then, to get back on the right track-the one which produces the best ontological result-we must see “me” as both the implied identity and the non-being that precedes all happening and identification. Doing so necessarily includes the Absolute itself as part of this identity because we are inherently non-beings before we can “be” as such.
This non-being is the eternal aspect of the self that has been described in Tradition as “soul” or “Ātman”: that which is most like God the Eternal or Bráhman, the all-pervading soul of the universe. It is both the source of our experience and thus our knowledge of our selves and others, and the nexus to that which is beyond experience.
If it is easier to wrap your mind around, think of non-being as a point that represents the present in the middle of a time line where both ends extend infinitely in polar directions. The present point itself neither goes forward nor backward, doesn’t begin or end; yet without it past and future would have no distinction and thus no reality. You could also think of it as the verb suffix or adjective suffix “-ing”: “you” aren’t the sneeze itself, “you” are the sneezing; not the dancer but the dancing.
Aside from the poetic aesthetic of this point of view, which we could effectively call the Suffixive Identity, one is afforded the opportunity to go full circle in the way they understand themselves. It is easy to submit that “the self is an illusion” and cut the journey off at the base; but to understand the parameters and limitations of this illusory state and from there recommit your understanding of reality accordingly is a transcendent process, like moving one full circle up a spiral.
-- Shayne