Really good article discussing the concept of the self!
I suggest that everyone reads it, especially the SZs as the rumination we tend to find ourselves in as it turns out, (according to science) to be partly due to how we in the West seem to define ourselves.
"I am distinguishing mental suffering from physical pain. Pain occurs in the body and is a physical reaction—like when you stub your toe or break an arm. The suffering I speak of occurs in the mind only and describes things such as worry, anger, anxiety, regret, jealousy, shame, and a host of other negative mental states. I know it’s a big claim to say that all these kinds of suffering are the result of a fictitious sense of self. For now, the essence of this idea is captured brilliantly by Taoist philosopher and author Wei Wu Wei when he writes, “Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself — and there isn’t one.”
Knowing this about ourselves could really alleviate suffering, especially when we find ourselves in the midst of delusion.
I mean to suggest that if we cling hard to how the West has interpreted our sense of “I” then our suffering is magnified.
The science tells us we are wrong to do that.
Can you let go? can you meditate on the fact we are indeed actually nothing under all our grandiose delusion that ‘I’ am so important and what ‘I’ think really matters.
I read into some stupid stuff saying each “I” is really an infinite “you” like in many world’s theory. The universe branches into uncountable infinite universes for each quantum event so there are infinite people or “yous” and “I” out there like dopplegangers making different decisions or choices in life. It sounds like Eastern philosophy or mysticism and a lot of quantum whoo whoo stuff I read about early on like from movies like ‘what the bleep do we know’ and stuff like that to explain my condition and to entertain myself and starve off bordem and to increase my knowledge base.
I even did some introspection on my thoughts and thinking each thought or dream is me in a different universe (parallel universe). It’s not really helpful and doctors won’t get it or take the time to listen to it. It’s pretty out there even for me and might be still unknown or sci-fi.
Basically in the copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics the wave function collapses at the quantum level and in many world’s theory intepretation, the wave function doesn’t collapse at all, but is applied to the universe as a whole, I believe. One theory doesn’t involve parallel universes and implies free will, while the other is deterministic and implies infinite parallel univeres or a multiverse.
I still am confused, still learning, and don’t know much at all despite reading about it and banging my head (not literally haha).
