Be Nobody (14 page)

And when we look at either one of these two great portions of the supposed individual and indivisible self, we find that they themselves are not really single things either. What we call “the body,” as if it were one organism, is itself composed of many constituents—the torso, the limbs, and then all those yucky things inside the body that we talked about earlier in this chapter. And each of these separate parts is infinitely divisible into its own constituent parts. Even a single finger can, upon investigation, be dissected into the part above the knuckle and the part below, the fingernail part and the part beneath the fingernail, the left side of the fingernail and the right side—and on and on, ad infinitum.

There's
no part of us that isn't further divisible into its own parts
. That's what's entailed in saying “a part”; it's something that has a right side, a left side, a top, and a bottom (the parts of a physical object), which makes it different from other parts. And the same is true with a moment in time: a thought arises, lasts for a while, and then ends, and each of those three parts of the moment itself has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

When we say something like “right side” or “beginning,” these parts of a part can always be further partitioned: “right side of the
right side, left side of the right side, top and bottom of the right side;” or “beginning of the beginning, middle of the beginning, end of the beginning.”

And so it is that if we think we
are
the body and/or the mind, that self cannot be unitary, but in fact would be endlessly multiplied and fragmented.

Oh, come on! I didn't really think I actually was my parts. I'm not my body and mind; I
have
a body and mind. Now can we please stop thinking about this and get something to eat?

OK then. So while we might sometimes carelessly identify with one or another of the various constituents of the self, maybe the “I” we think we are is
separable from
those parts. And this would be the second of the three qualities that we attribute to the personal self:
independence
.

The investigation applied to this second kind of misconception about the self is called “The Same As or Different From?” It goes like this: Is the self
the same
as the parts that comprise the self, or is it
different from
(i.e., independent of) those parts? And like “the One and the Many,” if the self really and truly exists the way we think it does, it can't logically be both. It's an either/or proposition.

So let's check. If the self were
the same as
its parts, it couldn't be a unitary self, for as we've seen there are lots and lots of parts, physical and mental, that would comprise a self that was the same as its parts. If I were identical to the parts of me, there would be as many me's as there are parts to me.

That leaves the other option, that there's a self that is
different from
the parts. This would be a self that is independent of the parts, a self that
has
a body and mind. And “independent” means “doesn't
need them.” The body and mind could then be heaped together in London while the self could somehow separately be in New York City.

But that's impossible, isn't it? For one thing, whose mind is it that's thinking about a self that exists apart from the mind that's thinking about such a self? And in any case, that's not the you-say-your-name-to-yourself self we are so sure must be somewhere floating around inside the mind-body complex.

A room
has
four walls, but where is
the room
that has four walls? The self that we imagine has a body and mind is as unfindable as a unitary self that's
the same
as the body and mind. “The self,” like “the room,” cannot really exist independent of the parts that make its shadowy semblance possible.

Now this is really enough! Why can't he just leave us alone? What about that snack?

Finally, we turn to the third impossible thing that we believe when it comes to ourselves: the idea that there is an
unchanging
personal self. This is sometimes called the “witness self”—an invariable “I” that has observed “me” growing up as a child, graduating from school, getting married, having a family, moving from one house to another, and is presently watching “me” get old and moving nearer and nearer to death.
^VII

We all have this sense that there is an unchanging witness self that carries on continuously as everything else—life as a whole, one's thoughts and feelings, and every individual part of the body—is perpetually and ceaselessly changing. So where's that Waldo? Can we really believe that there's a tangible, perceptible present self that is in any real way whatsoever the same as the self we were when we were three years old?

Yes, we can believe that, as long as we don't have to think about it, so just quit it already! Like Popeye said, “I y'am what I y'am and that's all that I y'am!” Why bother with all this! Let's just stop this thinking about things, OK? I'm hungry . . .

To “The One or the Many” and “The Same As or Different From,” we can now add a third kind of analysis to our “Where's Waldo?” search from hell: “Changing or Unchanging?” Where is the individual, particularistic self that remains unchanging as everything else in us and around us changes? Or more subtly, where's the self that
undergoes
change? If there's only a constantly fluctuating self, there's not also an unchanging witness self, let alone an unchanging self that also undergoes change.

So the exercise is now complete. Disoriented? Confused? Filled with objections? Well, it's no wonder. As I warned you above, the ego doesn't like this “Where's Waldo?” game one bit! All kinds of resistance arises in ourselves when we try to find the “somebody self” we think is ourselves!

But I just know I'm somebody! There's probably some trick here. How could it be that I'm really nobody when it feels so obvious that I am somebody? And I still didn't get my snack!

•  •  •

And there is a trick here, actually. The self can be thought of as
both
unitary and plural, as
both
the same as and different from its parts, as
both
changing and continuous—because
the self is just an idea, not a thing
. From one perspective, the self can be conceptualized as singular, independent, and unchanging; and from another perspective
it can be thought of as plural, contingent, and fluctuating. It depends how you look at it—because the “somebody self” is not really there at all apart from our thinking it's there.

When it comes to the little, individual, particularistic, snowflake, caterpillar self, there is not a findable unitary, independent, unchanging entity either inside or apart from the body and mind. The “somebody self” is not a discrete, discernable object; it is only a conceptualized image.

When we say we have a “self-image” or a “self-conception,” we're way more accurate than when we say we have a self or when we claim
to be
somebody.

The “Waldo” we try to find when we go looking for it turns out to be only imaginary. Remember the movie
Harvey
, with Jimmy Stewart? The one whose lead character was always accompanied by an invisible six-foot rabbit? Well, the self we think we are is just as imaginary as Jimmy Stewart's friend Harvey the rabbit.

But imaginary things can feel quite real and can function quite well to bring us a lot of difficulty in life. The Mother of the Mother of All Mental Afflictions—ignorance about what kind of self we think we have—leads to all kinds of problems.

Our belief in the “self-existence” of the personal self—the feeling that Waldo (or Harvey) is
really there
apart from our merely thinking he's there—inevitably engenders what is called in the Buddhist texts “self-cherishing.” We become enchanted with and seduced by an illusory impression of the individualized self, and then we grasp and cling to it for dear life.

All the other mental afflictions—desire, anger, lust, pride, jealousy, envy, greed—arise either to defend or to promote what is, after all is said and done, just a misconception. Ultimately, we are imprisoned not by these negative emotions, but by the imaginary self who is adversely affected by them.

There's another false notion we have about ourselves that we haven't examined yet. It's the sense we have that there's
a self who's in control of the present
, a “master self” that rules over the current state of the body, the mind, and, indeed, all aspects of our life.

I like to think of this version of “me” as the “Captain Kirk self.”

In the original
Star Trek
television series, the spaceship
Enterprise
was overseen by Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner. He was often depicted sitting in his commander chair—a replica of which I've seen for sale, priced at over two thousand dollars!—on the upper deck of the starship, gazing out at the cosmos through that cool wraparound windshield. And Captain Kirk would bark out orders to his crew: “Scotty, raise deflector shields!” And Scotty would dutifully obey: “Aye, aye, sir! Deflectors raised.”

Somewhere ensconced inside the head, just behind the eyes (our own personal windshield of our own personal Spaceship Me) is where we usually locate the Captain Kirk self. And just like the dear captain, that commander self barks out orders: “Legs, prepare to walk!” “Mouth, commence talking!” “Mind, remember to pick up some milk!”

And often enough, our lackey crew obeys. The legs move when ordered to walk, the mouth flaps when instructed to speak (sometimes even before the mind is commanded to think!), and frequently we do remember to get the milk when Captain Kirk enjoins us to.

These kinds of experiences give us a strong conviction that this master self is in charge not only of what the body does and the mind thinks but also of everything else in our lives. And when confronted with incontrovertible evidence that contradicts our conviction, it's usually quite upsetting. When
we don't get our own way
, the old Captain tends to pitch a fit!

If there really were such an all-controlling self, why would that ruler ever decree that we have a bad day, or get upset at an annoying person, or have a headache, or get sick or old, or choose to be anything other than happy and content all the time? If our own personal Captain Kirk truly existed, wouldn't some of his commands seem sort of wacky? “Scotty, let's get really gloomy today. Raise depressors!” Wouldn't Scotty's clear retort be, “Captain, are ye mad? Have ye gone insane?”

In fact, there is no real Captain Kirk self, just as there's no unitary, independent, or unchanging personal self. And here's the real proof of that:
we can't change the present in the present
. If there were a Captain Kirk self, we would command everything in life to be just as we wished. And that's obviously not happening—have you noticed?

As you can probably tell from all my references, I watched a lot of television as a kid. Readers of a certain age might actually remember viewing two shows I used to like from the 1960s—
Bewitched
and
I Dream of Jeannie
. In the first, Elizabeth Montgomery played Samantha, a full-blown witch with all kinds of supernatural powers, married to a pretty hapless ordinary mortal named Darrin. When Samantha wanted to effect some change in a situation (often to fix something poor Darrin had messed up), she would simply wiggle her nose and—
shazam!
—the world would bend to her witchy will.

Bewitched
met with some success—it was the second most watched program on television in 1964, and nearly forty years later
TV Guide
magazine included it in a list of “The 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time”—so it wasn't long before a similar program,
I Dream of Jeannie
, went on the air. The premise again involved a match-up between a magic-making woman (a genie this time) and a normal guy (who was, however, an astronaut, whom his devoted wife called “master”—a patriarchal fantasy, simultaneously subverted by the mismatch when it came to actual power).

In addition to offering a genie instead of a witch in the lead role, the other major difference in the two programs (product differentiation!) was that Jeannie didn't wiggle her nose to magically transform reality whenever she wished. Her modus operandi was to fold her arms and forcefully nod her head such that her long ponytail would flop around a bit. And that was enough to change anything she wanted, right there and then, in the moment.

Most of us go through life wiggling our noses and shaking our ponytails, trying to miraculously transform the present in the present. But things don't work like that; we're not witches and genies, and the confirmation of this is all too apparent. The traffic doesn't unsnarl just because we wish it would; the headache doesn't disappear simply because we don't like having it; and the annoying person doesn't magically stop being annoying when we, metaphorically speaking, twitch our nose or bounce our ponytail. We can't wriggle our way out of tight spots just by wiggling our appendages!

The desire to change the present in the present is perhaps the biggest and most recurring itch of all, but it's the one we clearly can't alleviate by sorcery scratching. That mojo ain't working. The Captain Kirk/Samantha/Jeannie self is really (to switch the pop-cultural reference yet again) the Wizard of Oz, just a humbug behind the curtain, ineffectually moving nonfunctional levers and pulleys.