The Phantom Self

Why Seeing Through the Ego Isn’t the End of Suffering - and the Real Work that Remains

“Shiv / hearing you describe your awakening experience felt like déjà vu to me. I too experienced something very similar to you ten years ago though mine didn’t last as long as yours—only about a week. It was so clear to me then that the ego is “a ghost in the machine” so to speak. A disembodied voice claiming selfhood. Once I saw the awareness that I truly was, I just knew I couldn’t go back to that delusional ego-based mindset. Yet a week later I was back into it—and ever since then I can still sometimes see it for the impostor it is…but I lose myself in its fantasy narratives. I fall for it and I suffer over and over again. I guess I’m not quite sure what my question is. Just wondering if you have any thoughts on how not to become trapped in these patterns…”

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Your predicament is more common than you think. It is one I am most familiar with.

Over the past decade, I have encountered several individuals who have had similar awakening experiences - characterized by a dissolution of the separate sense of self that is commonly referred to as the ego, an awareness of (and as) a universal consciousness that inhabits and animates all that exists, and a feeling of unbounded freedom and expansion within the nervous system from the previously fettered existence it has been accustomed to. Through my talks with people - some reported this awakening lasting from a mere handful of seconds to a few years in some cases. My own first experience (I have had subsequent awakenings since but none as radical in their shifts as the first) lasted four months.

While certain key characteristics, like the ones I described above, remain fairly universal, others diverge significantly. Some people report ‘merging’ with objects, or inhabiting the first-person consciousness of another person or animal. In the Hindu ascetic traditions, such capabilities are referred to as siddhis - unrecognized potentials within our minds which can be unleashed through spiritual practice. I did not experience either of these capacities but what I did experience was a profound enhancement of my sensory perception. Colors were intensely vivid, sounds arrived with a clarity like never before, my spatial field of awareness became much wider, and the world took on a holographic appearance. For the first week of the experience I was actively aware of what I can only describe as a “substrate of light” - a field of conscious loving aliveness - that lay beneath that thin veneer we usually refer to as the material universe. Like the vast yet invisible bottom of an iceberg that one can see for the first time when one dives beneath the surface - it became abundantly clear that the material universe was a facade supported upon a foundation of this conscious substrate.

Yet, regardless of what one’s experience of awakening has been or how long its duration - one thing seems universally true: the ego always returns.

Now, I can tell you from experience that there are few experiences in life as distressing as when the separative self function reactivates. Previously when one suffered, one at least had the benefit of ignorance. One didn’t know any better - one simply assumed that this was reality. But the awakening experience provides a glimpse of another way of being entirely - one that immediately reveals the narrative one has been suffering through as a fiction - and in that moment we become freed of its hypnotic effect over us, just as one might wake up from a nightmare and realize that it had all been a dream. Yet, to be thrust back into that hypnotic state once again while being haunted by the memory of freedom and what it tasted like - is a different brand of suffering altogether.

Coping with this new suffering isn’t easy because its not the kind of suffering society understands. There are no support systems, social services or therapists that specialize in “post-awakening ego integration”. And the spiritual groups, teachers and gurus that purport to provide a solution are often victims of the same phenomenon and are struggling to cope with it themselves, though they would not admit as much. And so bypassing becomes the standard coping tool we unconsciously use to deal with this “fall from grace”. Being cast out of the kingdom of heaven once was painful enough. But twice just feels like a grave injustice.

One of the universal and most prevalent bypassing techniques I have witnessed is the construction of the spiritual ego. It is our attempt to resist being completely engulfed by the sense of separation the ego represents and to hold on to some shred of the freedom we felt during our awakening. And so we construct the “guru in the mind” - that version of ourselves that is spiritually wise, patient, benevolent and present to all the shenanigans of that “other” ego that has been inflicted upon us.

The glaring irony in this, of course, is that there is no other ego. There is only that same narrative voice role playing different characters within the drama of the self. The spiritual ego can take on a number of incarnations, both defined and amorphous - the ‘higher self’, the ‘awareness’, the ‘being’, the ‘I AM’. This bifurcation into two states - the ideal and the base - is not unique only to those who are coping with post-awakening symptoms. It is the way most people in society function - dividing who they are into two units: the instinctive self and the aspirational self. Yet, whereas for them the aspirational self is still some greatly improved yet wholly human version of who they are today - for spiritual seekers that aspirational self is the divine principle itself - God, Consciousness, Awareness, Brahman.

While most materialistically oriented people would view such an aspiration as delusional or hallucinatory - those of us who have experienced awakening know and have experienced first hand that unity consciousness is not just possible, it is in fact what we are in reality. Yet, the fall from grace that happens post awakening, is accompanied by feelings of disgrace, shame and a kind of alienation that transcends anything we experienced before. We feel compelled to cope with this trauma by continuing to “play the part”. Of subconsciously choosing to “fake it until we make it” back to that place we know we belong.

And so the great paradox, that the very experience that revealed our authenticity to us for the first time becomes the platform upon which we build a new layer of inauthenticity. The very nakedness that revealed the hypocrisy and vanity of the emperor, now becomes his ‘new clothes’.

So what is one to do about it?

The Phantom Self

One warm evening in June of 2004, a Canadian man named Stephen Sumner was riding a scooter down a country road in Tuscany when he was struck by a car. He lay in a ditch for four and a half hours, only partially conscious, until he was discovered by a young Italian shepherd who immediately called an ambulance. Sumner was taken to a hospital in Siena with broken ribs and collarbone, a crushed arm and leg. When Sumner awoke in the hospital five days later from a coma, the surgeon informed him that they had managed to save his arm but that his left leg had to be amputated six inches above the knee.

As Sumner recovered in the hospital, strangely he still felt his left leg. He could feel it move and for the most part it seemed to be bent backwards painfully at the knee as he lay in bed. He even asked the doctor to ‘cut a hole in the bed’ so his “leg” could dangle free. The doctor told him that such ‘phantom pain’ was common and that it would go away. However, the pain and sensation in his missing leg persisted even after Sumner was discharged from the hospital and continued tormenting him for years to come.

“Phantom Limb Pain” is a phenomenon that is reported by nearly 80% of amputees. It is a symptom with no concrete origin and no known cure - although there are certain therapeutic techniques such as the “mirror technique” that have been known to be highly effective (more on that later). It is a phenomenon that has baffled the medical community for nearly a century - sometimes dismissed as ‘fabricated’ or ‘hallucinatory’. Yet, the people who experience it claim otherwise. Although they are fully aware that the missing limb is indeed gone and harbor no delusions of still possessing the amputated part - nevertheless, the nervous system responds otherwise. They can feels the fingers and toes of the amputated parts clenching and unclenching, sensations like tingling or tickling - and frustratingly, even excruciating pain that they have no way of treating since there is no limb there to treat.

The phenomenon of “Phantom Limb Pain” can be used as an analogy for what post-awakening suffering feels like. During an awakening, the egoic self-identity which had previously circumscribed our entire sense of self is suddenly and unceremoniously amputated from our awareness. For some people this can be quite a traumatic experience in itself. For others, it can be liberating - especially if that sense of identity was rooted in negativity, shame and suffering. You can think of it as amputating a gangrenous limb that is making a person ill and slowly killing them. In that case, the loss of the limb is more of a freedom for the individual than a tragedy.

However, what most people don’t expect is the “Phantom Self” that returns - like a ghost of something that has already died - to haunt us. Like the pain an amputee experiences in their phantom limb, this Phantom Self continues to cause suffering even though we can clearly see it is not really there. And just like many amputees experience frustration with the lack of support systems that exist to treat pain in imaginary limbs - seekers feel endlessly helpless about how to cope with the suffering caused by a self that they know to be imaginary.

Fast forward to 2008, Stephen Sumner was working in Mexico when a particularly severe bout of phantom pain put him out of commission for three days. He was unable to work or even meet people during that time. He had heard of “mirror therapy”, invented by neurologist V.S. Ramachandran of the University of California, San Diego. The technique involves placing a mirror angled to reflect the existing limb in such a way that it creates the appearance of two whole limbs - the existent limb and its mirror reflection in the place where the missing limb should be. Moving the existing limb, then generates a visual illusion that the missing limb is also moving. This simple trick although obvious to the participant nevertheless tricks the brain into believing the missing limb is functioning harmoniously. And through this simple trick, a majority of users experiencing significant relief from their chronic phantom pain.

A phantom solution to a phantom problem.

Sumner too experienced such a profound relief that, two years later, he decided to travel to Cambodia - a country with one of the highest reported number of amputees due to the concentration of undetonated mines, left over from the Khmer Rouge regime, that are still active there. He began riding a bicycle loaded with mirrors into villages and teaching the land-mine survivors the mirror technique. His work was so successful at bringing relief to these victims that he expanded his offering to neighboring Laos, Myanmar and Sri Lanka.

The Root and the Remote

There is an experiment I often conducted when I was younger. I’d stand in the bathroom staring at my own reflection in the mirror, feeling fully identified with it - the overwhelming sensation that the man-in-the-mirror was “me”. Then, slowly and deliberately, I would shift my attention to that awareness that was looking out from behind my eyes towards the mirror. That, amorphous and impersonal witnessing function, in that moment became the new experience of ‘me’. Concurrently, the image in the mirror turned blurry and “other” - no longer associated with the self. After remaining in this position for a while, I would then shift my attention back towards the reflection in the mirror - and would watch as I slowly became “him” again. Going back and forth in this way, from reflection to awareness, was an entertaining way to procrastinate and avoid doing my college assignments that were due the next day.

The fascinating thing about human consciousness is that it is unbound by time and space. I can experience myself as ‘here’, centered in my body. But I can also experience myself as ‘there’ - a few feet away in the mirror. I can experience myself in a photograph on a wall in my mother’s bedroom while facetiming her thousands of miles away. I can also experience myself in the past (as I just did while recalling the bathroom experiment I ran as a college student). Or in the future, in the forms of the person I might become and the scenarios I may encounter one day.

Consciousness has the capacity to project itself and, when it does, so does the self-function. In other words, there is the root self as well as a “remote counterpart” that exists at the location at which consciousness is projected. So, if I project my awareness upon the mirror, that remote self appears in the mirror. If I project my awareness into some memory of the past, the remote self appears in the past. And if I imagine some beautiful or horrific future - then that is where the remote self appears.

For most people, that projection is reality. What they experience of the world is mostly mental images, memories, fantasies and sensations greatly distorted by predominantly unconscious cognitive biases. And so, they confuse the ‘remote self’ that appears in that projection with their root self.

Awakening profoundly shifts that status quo for two reasons. First, we become aware, for the first time, of an entirely different presence within - the root self. Second, the capacity for consciousness to project temporarily becomes disabled. The effect is that the remote self vanishes completely. Thus, we are able to see firsthand, and for the very first time, that the projection was in fact - a projection. That the only reality that exists is the here-now. Everything else is just a play of consciousness - including the person we thought we were.

However, that changes when the systems come back online. The projection capacity of human consciousness is not a bug, it is a feature. And when consciousness begins projecting again - the remote self also becomes resurrected. None of this is a problem per se. Because once one has seen the unreality of this remote self - once one has seen that it is merely a holographic clone of the root self - one cannot go back to ever fully believing in it.

The problem is that our nervous systems can’t tell the difference.

Just like the brains of amputees continued to feel pain even though they could clearly see that there was no limb there - so also, do our brains and nervous systems continue to feel like the remote self is real even after we have seen that it is not. Simply reminding a person that their separate self is not real is as ineffective as telling an amputee their severed limb is not there so their phantom pain is imagined.

The missing limb may be imagined, but the pain is real. Similarly, the separate self may be imagined, but the suffering it generates in the post-awakened seeker is real.

The inability to see this nuance and to confront it is why most teachings of non-duality and Neo-Advaita are ineffectual. They attempt to preach to the choir hoping that simply reiterating the unreality of the self will be sufficient to undo its felt impacts in the nervous system. And, as I mentioned earlier, most teachers of non-duality end up teaching as a form of coping with this very phantom suffering. They subliminally believe that if they fake it enough, eventually it will go away.

They are like amputees walking around pretending to be free of their phantom pain - preaching this freedom to other amputees, in the hopes that if enough people believe them then their own pain will release. But all it does is create more delusional amputees who live in the same denial of their phantom suffering.

Mirror, Mirror

Repeat after me:

The ego is not real, but the suffering it creates is.

Don’t believe me? Just look at the world around you. Look at how much suffering is needlessly propagated every day. Is that suffering imaginary? Are we all hallucinating dead children, starving families, broken homes, exploited innocents? Of course not. They exist.

And the suffering we experience is real too. Of course it is. Trying to convince ourselves our suffering is hallucinatory because it is the outcome of believing the narrative of a fictional self is foolish and undermines the truth of our experience. If someone who imagines himself to be Jesus were to punch me in the face, I could call the Jesus identity a delusion - but the punch would certainly hurt.

Human consciousness will always project a remote self simply because human consciousness will always project. We will always have the capacity to create memories of the past and simulations of the future. We will always have the capacity to abstract alternate scenarios that allow us to strategize and trouble shoot situations before we encounter them. And the moment we create these simulations - they will immediately be inhabited by a remote and simulated version of ourselves.

The nervous system, however, cannot tell the difference. So, if the simulated scenario is one of distress, then the nervous system will react to that distress. Attempting to control the projections is an effort in futility because consciousness mostly projects spontaneously. Suppression of thought or manipulation by means of enforced positive thinking has backlash effects. Mild dissociation via meditative techniques and mindfulness whereby we situate ourselves in the root self witnessing the remote self from a detached vantage point are only temporarily effective and do nothing to resolve the suffering it inadvertently creates.

Then what is the solution?

Recall what I said earlier:

“A phantom solution to a phantom problem.”

Meditation techniques, positive affirmations and such are attempts to use “real” solutions to address a phantom cause. It is like giving an amputee experiencing phantom limb pain some Tylenol. Or telling them to focus on the sensation in the existing limb while watching the pain in the missing limb from a distance.

It doesn’t actually address the problem.

What is required is to address the nervous system at its level of consciousness and not at the level of the rational mind. In other words, what is required is an equivalent “mirror technique” for the suffering generated by the phantom self.

What is so bizarre and wonderful about the mirror technique is how preposterous it actually is. The amputee can clearly see that the mirror is simply reflecting the existent limb in the place of where the amputated limb would sit - and yet, this immediately de-escalates the pain in their nervous system. When neurologists have attempted to uncover why this simple trick works - they speculate that the brain contains a spatial map of the body - every part of the physiology and where it exists in space. And when a part of the body is suddenly amputated, the brain does not revise its map. It continues to act as if that body part is still present. Yet, because it is unable to use or control it - this manifests as physiological pain, numbness or discomfort triggered by its alarm systems.

The solution, bizarrely, is not to get the brain to revise its map - but to reassure it that the missing limb is fine and healthy. This is done by showing it the healthy limb’s reflection and then moving it smoothly, harmoniously - even stroking it gently and soothingly so that the brain’s responses, over time, grow more docile. This doesn’t mean the phantom sensations go away. In fact, despite the mirror technique’s successes, amputees still report feeling like their missing limb is with them. It just doesn’t cause them pain like it once did.

Similarly, the real work post-awakening is not to find a way to eradicate that phantom self or to redraw the ‘map of the self’ in our minds so to speak. But, paradoxically, to rehabilitate it. To affirm its reality - not to that aspect within us that sees through it - but to our nervous systems. And we do this by engaging with this phantom self - this remote projected version of self that we refer to in shorthand as “ego” - as real.

My Approach

It took me a long time to realize this dynamic. For I believed the purpose of seeing through the veil of illusion was to firmly establish myself in reality.

This created a paradoxical state of tension between my higher order perception and that of my nervous system’s. And no matter how I tried, I simply could not override the learned neural patterns my nervous system had inherited - through DNA, through ancestral knowledge, through the societal conditions of my upbringing, through the coping mechanisms I had developed as a child for dealing with trauma.

All of that compounded in suffering.

And it simply was not enough to see the unreality of the separate self identity. I had to reprogram my nervous system’s response to its perceived reality.

So I shifted my approach from one of denial or aloof witnessing to one of active engagement. Instead of holding the narrative at an arm’s length, I immersed myself in it. Instead of eyeing the protagonist with suspicion, I became him again freely and without judgment. Not to usurp him but to rehabilitate him.

When I was younger I would often wonder at the apparent contradiction between the Buddha’s teaching of Anatta (the unreality of self) and his prescriptive teachings like the Eightfold Path. How could he simultaneously assert the self as illusory and then proceed to prescribe how that very illusion should behave? I chalked it down to a distortion of his teachings by the many followers who came after him and canonized his philosophies.

It was only much later that I realized what he was truly pointing at: the nature of human life as dukkha - unsatisfactoriness - the domain of the separate self. He could see that although an illusion, it was nevertheless a necessary illusion.

The separate self was a feature of consciousness, not a bug.

This realization revamped everything for me. My approach to life, to relationships, to work - and most importantly to my self. I began to see my projections not as reality but symbolic pointers for something yet unrevealed. Even though they were illusions - they became illusions I could work with - just as amputees can work with their phantom limbs by stroking the reflection of their healthy limbs.

The result was profound for a number of reasons. Firstly, that bizarre state of suffering generated by the desire to “return to the awakened state” completely alleviated since I was no longer interested in getting there. Secondly, I found I could engage with my mundane everyday life with a renewed intimacy. I could participate in the stories and be the protagonist without feeling a sense of shame or loss. Yet, what was different was that the experience of that protagonist no longer circumscribed the whole of my self. I could, at any time, acknowledge and relocate to my root self. Yet, I no longer feared wandering the projected territories of my consciousness dressed as my simulated remote self either.

However, there was still the issue of my nervous system and its deeply conditioned responses to stimuli that needed my attention. In the yogic tradition, these are called Vasanas - or past impressions (in the Hindu tradition this is the accumulation of one’s karma, but in a more secular sense can be seen as one’s genetic and sociologically conditioned traits and dispositions). I realized that my awakening, followed by the subsequent integration of my illusory self, were not enough. I also had to take accountability for my Vasanas - my nervous system’s learned responses to stimuli - whether real or imagined.

Awaken. Integrate. Then take accountability.

That process of reprogramming the subconscious responses of the nervous system is a painstaking one. I have created a multitude of my own approaches coupled with others that I have encountered that resonated with me - including meditation, Jungian dreamwork, gestalt awareness practices, hypnotherapy and more. And this is all done while maintaining the paradoxical realization that the very self the nervous system is attempting to calibrate to isn’t really there!

When Stephen Sumner visits the Cambodian villages on his bicycle carrying his mirrors - he harbors no illusions. Although the people he shows the mirror technique to are amazed by its almost immediate effects - he also knows how their brains will simply default back to their prior programming unless they persistently practice their exercises every day. To this effect, he typically assigns a family member of the individual like a son, or some close friend, the responsibility of reminding the individual to practice the mirror technique daily for a specific length of time in multiple intervals. It can take weeks and sometimes even months to successfully reprogram a nervous system to stop generating pain in a phantom limb.

Reprogramming the nervous system’s response to the phantom self is at least as arduous if not more due to the complex relationship we have with it. But like the Mirror Man, as Sumner is affectionately known, I feel drawn to bring others, who have experienced their own phantom suffering, into my own approach which has worked greatly to alleviate suffering in my own life - though much still remains to be done.

There’s a moment, after the mirrors have done their work, when the amputee stops checking for the missing limb. Life has flowed back into the space that once ached. That’s when the real work begins - the work of living again and of walking that road with others who’ve been there.

This is the real journey: not to banish the ghost, but to live so fully that it has nowhere left to haunt.

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Author’s Note: After reviewing the piece I wanted to add this for the benefit of my readers. The reference to Dark Knight Journeys at the close isn’t included to sell or promote. It’s simply a part of the same conversation as the rest of this piece - another format in which I’m living and expressing the insights that I’ve described here. Whether or not anyone joins, the insights themselves are the point.