Self Vs. No-Self

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One thing to look out for that will help you recognize the experience of no-self is that no-self isn’t exactly something that happens to you. It happens to all experience, you might say. It’s not just that you lose your self; all experience loses the self. You never realized that all experience had a self. But when the self is gone, you recognize that the presence of the self wasn’t just there, where you experienced yourself to be—in the body, mind, spirit, or awareness. Rather, its reach extended throughout all of your experience. The whole field of experience and everything in it was caught up in and shaped by the self. So when you lose your self, everything else loses it too. Not just you but the whole field of experience and everything in it will be selfless. I imagine that this might sound strange. However, even a temporary taste of the experience of no-self will make this evident for you. Until then, you can keep it in the back of your mind as a way of helping you determine whether or not you are having an authentic no-self experience.

 

So, the experience of no-self does not take place here in a mind/body. Nor does it take place in spirit or in awareness. The experience of no-self is not known in the place that the self currently seems to be. Rather, no-self is experienced everywhere and in everything. No-self is in the chair you are sitting on, it is in your dog, it is in your right hand, it is in the thoughts continuously appearing and disappearing in your mind, it is in the roar of the plane flying overhead. It is not only in those things but it is them. No-self is what they are discovered to be.

 

(End Book I Quote)