The Scope of the Self

What the Buddha was really going on about and why you probably aren't an NPC

“Shiv - what’s your take on the Simulation hypothesis that is gaining traction these days amongst the mainstream and also prominent scientists? This idea that reality is an AI, and we are all NPCs seems to align with the Buddha’s views on Anatta. What are your thoughts on this?”

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I have, for a long time now, maintained that we most likely do live in a technological simulation of some kind. In fact, it’s more or less of a foregone conclusion, as far as I am concerned, for reasons that I will articulate a little later. The more intriguing questions for me lie around the specific nature of the simulation and the part we play within it.

But before we get into that, let’s address something else you brought up which I feel is often misunderstood - and that is the Buddhist doctrine of Anatta. This doctrine has been debated amongst Buddhist scholars, both ancient and contemporary, so I am not going to delve into the technical aspects of it. However, I will add my two cents on how I interpret this teaching and why I interpret it in that way.

Anatta has been translated into English in a number of ways - “not-self”, “non-self”, “no self”, “without self” - yet none of these definitions truly captures the cultural nuance of the word, and the way in which it was used when first coined.

Firstly, the way we understand the word “self” today is very different compared to how the Hindus understood it 2500 years ago, when the Buddha lived. The Hindus were yet unfamiliar with modern psychology and the works of Freud, Jung et al. They did not have the same conception of “ego” we have now. Instead, their definition of “self” was a purely metaphysical one - of an atman - a seed of consciousness with its own individuality, that reincarnated over and over again, assuming karma in the process, on a repeating cycle that only ended when it recognized its identity with the Universal Consciousness, Brahman.

It is this definition of “self”, and no other, that the Buddha was referencing (being a Hindu himself) in his doctrine of Anatta. In accordance with his other doctrines of Annica (impermanence) and Dukkha (suffering), he was basically saying the following (obviously I am paraphrasing here):

“Look, my Hindu brethren. You have been driving yourself bananas believing that you have these souls which keep reincarnating in order to clarify their karma and this is causing you a lot of misery and dissatisfaction. You have no way of knowing if this is truly the case. So, let go of your metaphysical beliefs and take a look around you. Life is impermanent. Nothing stays the same. Including you. Stop holding on to some idea of an eternal self and, instead, find liberation through the absolute and total acceptance of life as it is happening, right now!”

So as not to leave people hanging with yet another empty philosophical platitude, of which Hinduism had provided them plenty, he then created an 8-step program which he called the Noble Eightfold Path: a series of practices that could allegedly lead a person to enlightenment.

Now, the reason I don’t believe that the Buddha was outright denying the existence of self altogether is because if he truly did feel that there was no self with the agency to take deliberate action, then to whom would he be suggesting this Eightfold Path and for what purpose?

If the whole thing was deterministic for him, then why would there be any reason to suggest a means of willful action or even bother with the acknowledgement of any philosophical perspective? If you realized that you were talking to purely programmed entities, why would you then speak to them as if they were real?

For me, his teaching of no-self was not a denial of the existence of self but rather a pointer to the unknowability of what self is. He wasn’t saying there isn’t a self. But rather, that self isn’t what one imagines it is.

When I experienced a powerful and unexpected spiritual awakening in my early 20’s following a long period of depression and suicidal ideation - I was thrust into a four-month period of blissful oblivion in which reality revealed its underbelly to me. I lost all concept of the self that I had previously been familiar with (the ego in the Freudian sense), I lost my ability to clearly discern boundaries between what had previously been “me” and other people, creatures, objects and places. And yet, the experience and awareness of self still remained intact, and even became greatly enhanced. What changed was not the fact of the self, but the scope of the self.

And so, if someone had come along and asked me then - “Is there a self?” My honest answer to them would have been: “Not in any sense that you might imagine.” But it would not have been an outright, “No”.

That, in my view, is what the Buddha was pointing to. Not some metaphysical notion of self, nor even the severely limited and conditioned ego that has usurped the throne of direct experience, but rather the unfettered raw perception that we were once born with which comes to the fore in unusual mystical experiences or in a spiritual awakening.

Now, to return to your original question of the Simulation Hypothesis. First, let’s be clear that there is no single coherent hypothesis out there. Instead, there exist a few different versions with significantly different parameters and inferences which all loosely tie into this idea that we are living in a simulated reality of sorts. Let’s also not forget that pretty much every religion has presented its own rendition of the simulation hypothesis, so this is nothing new. What is unique about our contemporary language surrounding this idea is that, unlike our forebears, we now live in a world in which simulations are indeed technologically possible and are, in fact, an integral part of our daily lives. Consequently, we are able to bring an added dimension of insight on the subject.

Broadly speaking, there are two distinct versions of the Simulation Hypothesis that support two diametrically opposite worldviews. The first is the idea that this entire universe and reality we live in is purely AI-generated. This supports a worldview in line with that of scientific materialism in that it posits a purely deterministic reality, just one that is generated by AI. In this simulation, every human being is an NPC - a non-playable character - i.e. possessing no will or volition of its own, but purely responding based on the algorithms running it.

This is quite in line with what most non-dualists and some Buddhists believe is the case. It is also compatible with the contemporary neuroscientific view of consciousness being a byproduct of brain phenomena and the self as possessing no real volition of its own as it is the product of a purely deterministic process.

The second version of the Simulation Hypothesis is one in which, while the reality we live in may indeed be AI-generated to a certain extent, the players themselves are not. Instead, this is an RPG (a role-playing game) in which players who exist outside the simulation take on PC’s, playable characters, or avatars within the simulation to satisfy certain objectives, goals, missions and so on. This version is not compatible with scientific materialism as it posits, by the very nature of its argument, that there exists a meta-reality beyond that of the physical universe - of which our own reality is merely derivative. In this model, Consciousness cannot be created by our biology because it belongs to the meta-realm and merely inhabits these avatars we are playing, much as your own consciousness might pretend it is Mario while playing a Super Mario Brothers videogame.

There is a third, somewhat hybrid version of the two possibilities above, in which while some players in this game are PCs, most are NPCs. This is what most online videogames look like today. Most of the characters you encounter as you explore the game world are just computer programmed entities. Yet, every once in a while, you might encounter another player, who is a real person just like you, sitting at their computer somewhere else in the world.

I had mentioned in the beginning that the idea of this reality being a simulation is a foregone conclusion for me. Let me explain why.

One of the clear revelations I had during my 4-month period of awakening was my ability to see the “substrate of reality”. This was visually and somatically evident to me at all times, without pause.

To try and illustrate what I mean, let me use the analogy of a home movie projector. When projecting a film on your wall with the lights turned off, you can clearly see a single beam of light coming out of the projector and casting the images of the film on the wall. The characters in the movie have no idea that their reality is being projected because they can only perceive the film reality. But you, who are sitting in the room watching the film, can clearly see that beam of light.

Now, imagine for a second that you were a character in the film, who had somehow developed the ability to see the light of that projector illuminating everyone and everything around you, including yourself.

That is what I experienced during my awakening.

I am not speaking metaphorically when I say that I could see an entire energetic substrate of light underlying everything and everyone around me, including myself. And the reason I call it an “energetic” substrate is because it possessed not only a visual component, but a somatic component as well. It didn’t just look like something, it felt like something.

Visually, it appeared as a vast and vibrant field of light perpetually moving and dancing like a golden aurora beneath the surface of a thin veil-like material world. Yet, it also felt like the most profound and nourishing peace, deep unconditional love and an all-encompassing and eternal sense of all-is-well.

To say this substrate was “alive” would be an injustice. Because to me it was more alive than anything in the material world. In fact, it became utterly evident to me that the material world was an artificial and dead world. Even the people and creatures in it were artificial and dead. The only thing truly ALIVE was this substrate that brought the surface world to life.

Moreover, I found that my own sense of self reverberated in harmony with this energetic substrate. It was who and what I was, instead of the limited body-brain suit I had learned to associate myself with. And my response to this revelation was a spontaneous effusion of love for everything that I set my eyes on - people, dogs, trees, cars, fire hydrants, electrical lines, clouds - everything was made of that same energetic field that emanated from, through and into me.

Although, my perspective today has dimmed slightly from the stunning brilliance of that view, I nevertheless continue to see the material world as a thin veil over a more primary and profound sea of existence.

Moreover, when I call this material world a veil, I am not referring only to space but also to time. Just like time in a movie can be sped up, slowed down, skipped over, or traversed in any haphazard way one wants while having little correlation to what we call time in our reality, so also could I see that time in this world was just a mechanical construct constrained by parameters that had little to no relevance within that substrate upon which the simulation was being cast.

William Blake’s poem, The Auguries of Innocence, begins with the oft-quoted verse:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand

And a Heaven in a Wildflower

Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand

And Eternity in an hour

While this sentiment may strike most people as metaphorical, this was my experience of reality in the most literal sense during my awakening.

As self, I discovered I was unconfined by space, time, form and size. I was everywhere and everything at once. And the sound of the ticking clock was no different than the sound of my fingertips drumming on my desk - nothing more than an arbitrary measurement of that which is immeasurable.

I have little doubt that a simulation is what our reality is. The questions that continue to intrigue me pertain to the possible source(s) of this simulation and the mechanics that have brought it about. I do not share the non-dualistic notion of a purely deterministic reality. Nor do I subscribe to the neuroscientific view that consciousness is produced by the brain. Mario might inherit my consciousness in order to make choices in the game world, yet when it’s “game over” although Mario’s brain dies, my consciousness still remains.

Reality appears to me as, what in computer programming language would be called, a series of nested loops. A nested loop is a logical loop within another loop which allows one to perform more complex tasks, like iterating over multi-dimensional arrays or data structures. With each successive iteration, complexity grows at an exponential rate.

To give you an idea of what this exponential growth looks like consider a simple piece of paper. If you were to fold that piece of paper, you would double its width. Fold it again and that width would quadruple. If you fold it a third time the width would increase by a factor of 8 and so on. Most people can only get to about 7 folds before the paper gets too dense to fold any further. But if you were to, theoretically, fold that piece of paper 42 times, its width would be the equivalent of the distance from the Earth to the moon.

What if reality is no different? What if with each ‘fold’ in Consciousness, it increases in complexity? Then just like Mario inherits my consciousness in the game world, perhaps I inherit the consciousness of some meta-version of myself in a meta-world. And perhaps, that being then similarly inherits its consciousness from a realm superseding that. And so on, as far as the folds of reality go - all eventually emerging from a single source of consciousness. What the Hindus referred to as Brahman.

We cannot know any of this for certain because a nested loop by its nature cannot directly reference the higher loop within which it exists. But experiences like the awakening I experienced in my twenties, like those of many others, may provide vital existential clues to the fundamental makeup of reality.