Layers of Me

“Just finished reading your latest substack and wondered if you would consider addressing the left and right hemispheres of the brain as a subject.  I noticed in one of your comment replies to someone a few weeks ago you said that one needed to read and understand poetry with the right side of the brain.     

After reading McGilchrist’s The Master and His Emissary and Jill Bolte Taylor’s A Stroke of Insight and from my own limited experimental experience, I am wondering if most religions and also non-duality and spiritual teachers are really encouraging people to abide more in the right, particularly those who emphasis being “present” - but no one ever mentions this.  Both sides are necessary and work in co-operation, but I can see most of my problems arise from an over functioning left where “me, me, me”rules supreme.”

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I must warn you beforehand - none of what I am about to write will directly answer your question about the hemispheres of the brain and how each contributes to certain aspects of our experience of self. I probed into that topic quite a bit in my podcast with Chris Niebauer, author of “No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology is Catching Up to Buddhism”. I personally don’t think the dichotomy between left and right hemispheres is a clean one when understanding the experience of “me”. It is at best a crude approximation.

However, my approach to understanding the experience of ‘me’ is a little different.

The Three A-Me-gos

It’s interesting the phrase “me,me,me” that you’ve used, because there are in fact three me’s that operate within you. 

There is being which is the most fundamental form of “me”. It is there from the moment you are conscious - at birth and even prior, in vitro. A newborn has no sense of itself as being separate from the world around it. It assumes the whole of the world is itself. Sensations of self and sensations of world all blend together in a concoction of somatic experiences, emotions and involuntary reactions.

Yet the newborn senses the essence, or the spirit of existence, which is why it reacts to existence - with curiosity, with hunger, with need, with laughter and with wailing. (Note: the word “spirit” here points to the suchness of life and not some metaphysical state). This being is the bedrock “first-me” upon which all other layers of “me” are built.

The second layer of “me” is the self. This begins to develop around the age of a few months. This is when the baby begins to become aware of objects, people and events in the world that appear to be separate from it. Toys, food, things, shapes, body parts, people - you will notice babies have a tendency to want to taste everything. As if they are testing to see whether consuming the thing will make it part of their being again.

This is around the time babies begin to develop likes and dislikes - toys they prefer and those they avoid, food they like and food they won’t touch, people they are drawn to and those whom they are afraid of. There is a subconscious understanding that dawns that some things in the world are of benefit and some things can harm. Over the first few years of life, the self - the “second-me”, becomes concretized and then remains in that form for the rest of a person’s life.

It’s around the age of three, that the third layer of “me” begins to develop and this is the ego. At this stage, a child not only becomes identified with their own name, but also with their family, their gender and their place and position in their immediate social surroundings. It is typically around this age that the personality the child will develop, begins to take shape. 

This third-me, the ego, remains a work in progress for one’s entire lifetime although the main structure becomes formed during the adolescent years and assumes it’s general shape by the time one becomes a young adult. However, precisely because the social milieu keeps shifting and changing throughout one’s lifetime, this ego - the third-me - is forced to shift and adapt with it.

Society As a Reflection of the Individual

So, to recap: being is the awareness of existence as an undifferentiated reality, self is the awareness of one’s individual existence separate from that of the world and the ego is the awareness of one’s existence AS a social character.

You can think of it as follows: 

Now, most of what society is concerned with is that societal plane of your existence and the aspect of you that relates to it - the third-me – the ego. They are oblivious to the first layer and only mildly focused on the second layer.

If you look at the evolution of civilization it has followed a similar pattern to the evolution of the human child. Ancient pagan tribes were fundamentally oriented by a spiritual understanding of nature and their position within it – these spiritual principles and forces drove everything they did from the mundane to the mystical. Then came our agrarian societies that became more focused on our physical needs as human animals – of food, shelter and clothing - and ensuring that all those needs were met. Thus the focus became about building infrastructure that could support those needs en masse.  With the industrial revolution and later the advent of technology, our focus shifted away from the needs of our bodies to the needs of our individual personalities.

As for the individual so also for the collective. Human civilization also operates on these three planes of existence and its values are reflected in the existential identities of the human beings who comprise it. Just as most individuals today no longer have a sense of their spiritual center, are only mildly interested in their physical/natural self and are mostly focused on the whims and wants of their personalities – so also, in turn, is society oblivious to its own spiritual center, only mildly concerned with the natural world and almost completely consumed with the artificial world of marketing to, managing and manipulating the desires of the individual. The paradigm first shifted from spiritual needs to human needs and then to human wants.

Consumerism as a paradigm is 0% focused on our spiritual needs, only about 10% focused on our survival needs and 90% focused on our egoic needs. And as the majority of the globe functions under a consumerist paradigm today, it is clear to see where the whole system is heading. Ego-driven societies create ego-driven citizens and ego-driven citizens create further ego-driven societies. It is a vicious cycle. Which is why when young people today are shown examples of their great grandparents who struggled for survival and once waited in long lines for basic rations, they have no reference to that sort of reality. The problems that cause people anxiety today are mostly related to egoic inconvenience (eg. Amazon package delayed or spotty internet) rather than physical survival (eg. hunger, poverty and genocide).

The Relationship Between Self and Ego

Society is fundamentally ego-driven today. Attractive personalities often attract mates, bear children, amass wealth and resources and thus ensure their own survival and lineage. Whereas less attractive personalities will struggle in some or all of these departments.

The second-me - the self - has no real interest in the social game. However, it does have a vested interest in its individual survival. So, as long as it has an attractive ego working to ensure its survival - it is unlikely to probe into what the ego does to make that happen. As the saying goes: “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.” Which means to say, if things are going well, don’t question it!

However, it’s when things are not going well - when the self feels insecure about its own survival, is feeling threatened, diminished, anxious or fearful - that it will begin to question what is going on. It begins to wonder about the ego. It begins to ask - is my ego who I really am? 

This is where institutionalized religions tend to enter. Because they encourage people to question and go beyond the identification of the personality and its petty pleasures and dislikes. But they will (depending on what the flavour of the religion is) then typically insert their own version of what will benefit the self and its agenda for survival. They will propose adopting a “spiritual ego”. An ego is after all nothing more than a survival strategy.

For instance, Christianity may speak to the self - that second-me - and say something like : “why concern yourself with surviving just this life when you could have eternal life in return?”

The self - forever fearful of its survival thus gets drawn to institutionalized spirituality hoping that by hedging its bets on immortality it can forever lose its fear of having to ensure its own survival and thus attempts to cast off the ego (which it once saw as an ally but now sees as the enemy).

The real purpose of spirituality however (as practiced by the mystical traditions) is really to penetrate below the agenda of the second-me, the self, and move instead towards the first-me – being itself.

This is why the mystical aspects of institutionalized religion and spirituality have never been the mainstream focus. It undercuts the ability to derive any material benefit from such a pursuit. A catholic priest who can promise absolution for a price is far better positioned in such a hierarchy than the abbot of a monastery dedicating his life to supporting monks in their meditative and contemplative pursuits – often for free and relying upon alms and the goodwill of others.

This mystical approach also offers no social benefits. Which is why most mystics tend to be reclusive and live outside the bounds of society.

Two Stages of Failure

Let’s return to the evolution of the “me” from the first layer of being to the second of self and finally the third of ego. The ego is really an individual’s social survival strategy. And if that strategy is working, the individual never has a reason to question the ego. The spiritual discovery towards the root ‘me’ cannot even begin.

It’s typically when the ego is failing in its job to ensure the person’s survival – by generating extreme anxiety, stress, depression, existential angst and insecurity – that the individual (as mentioned) begins to question the ego. That is the beginning of the spiritual discovery process – the questioning of the ego and its validity.

However, the problem is, as I mentioned already, most forms of institutionalized religion and spirituality will simply provide the person with a new ego strategy – a spiritual ego. And the person feels quite happy about this new ego identity and takes it for a test drive. Sometimes, the new strategy works well enough and the individual will never need to question their ego again – in other words the spiritual discovery ends. However, in some cases they may grow disillusioned and find that no matter what kind of ego they adopt – whether material, humanitarian or spiritual – they always return to those feelings of insecurity and existential anxiety.

It is then that the first point of failure may occur. This is called an awakening. The person may suddenly wake up to the realization that there is a more fundamental “me” beneath that ego identity – the self. And this self is not driven by egoic things. It is not past-future oriented. It doesn’t care about things like opinions, ideals, beliefs and social norms. It is more primal than that – it is closely related to the natural world. It is present-moment centered. Rather than “I am Shiv”, it says: “I am”. It is concerned only with the immediate reality around it – simple things and simple needs.

This revelation of there being a self beneath the ego can be tremendously liberating. It frees a person from the psychological suffering that the egoic state of mind typically produces. Such a person may still employ the use of an ego as a strategy for navigating their social terrain – but it remains to them just that: a strategy, not an identity.

The journey of spiritual discovery typically ends here for most. Most people are content with having relieved the egoic burden they carried all their lives. Yet, some continue to probe deeper asking – why they are motivated by even the needs of the self. Through the contemplation of sickness, death and physical suffering of loved ones – an individual realizes that even without the ego, they are not secure. Suffering still exists in the form of the impermanence of life – the death, illness, injury and misery of loved ones and oneself. The absurdity of being a human who is programmed for attachments in a reality in which those attachments will be mercilessly torn away becomes unbearable. Knowing that the deeper you love the more profoundly you lose becomes a sentence too painful to accept.

It is then that the second point of failure may occur. This is a deeper kind of awakening. The person may suddenly wake up to the realization that there is an even more fundamental “me” beneath the self – the being. And being is not concerned with the things self is worried about. It does not care about birth, death, change, suffering, pleasure and pain. It is not present-moment centered. It is even more primal than that – it is closely connected to the essence of existence (suchness is what the Buddha called it). It experiences no time – dwelling in a sense of timelessness or eternity. It is not concerned with the world of form at all – people, objects, events or experiences. It is simply concerned with being aware.

Rather than “I am”, it simply says “am” (which is synonymous for “is”).

Recognition of this fundamental “me” (which as you recall was your original state as a newborn before the ‘self’ entered the equation) is what is typically called enlightenment in spiritual language.

When Nisargadatta said “Thou Art That” the that he was referring to was this fundamental “me”. The being which is experienced as all existence itself. And the strategy he recommended was to “stick with the I AM”. In other words, he was teaching people to turn their attention away from the ego (I am Shiv) towards the self (“I Am”), in hopes that from that place a handful of students would actually stumble upon being (“Am”).

The Superposition Principle

Some people do not experience these two points of failure (or two awakenings) – from ego to self and from self to being – as two separate events. They may instead experience one catastrophic awakening (as was the case with me) where both points of failure occur simultaneously and being is revealed instantaneously. This can be liberating but also highly disorienting and can take a very long time to adjust to. Yet, eventually regardless of whether a person has undergone that process in a staged manner or suddenly – this isn’t the end of the spiritual process either.

Unfortunately, most spiritual traditions see “abiding in enlightenment” as the ultimate goal for a human being. In other words, they propose that once a person has shed the ego and the self, they can simply rest as being - the fundamental me. This is evident in the lives of famous yogis and teachers in India who allow their bodies to completely deteriorate and waste away because they are lost in the timelessness of being and have no concern anymore for “worldly things”.

However, in my view, the purpose of the whole spiritual journey is to come back full circle and inhabit all three layers seamlessly. In other words, to be aware of the spaciousness of being, to inhabit the humanity of the self and to utilize the social aptitude of the ego in such a manner that the three become harmoniously superimposed. A singular and fully integrated expression where “Am”, “I Am” and “I am Shiv” become three equally true statements.

The spiritual process thus is the undoing of the forgetting with which this all innocently began in the first place. When the newborn forgot being because of its fascination with the self. When the toddler forgot self because of its fascination with ego. Awakening is the process of remembering those lost selves – with the ultimate purpose not to return to an infant state – but to unite them in a way we couldn’t before. Through Awareness instead of ignorance.