Is the human self nonexistent?

That's a very appropriate (and also beautiful) analogy for the model we're describing.

Tell me if this isn't very similar to what Nanci Danison writes in the following, describing what she was experienced and remembered during her NDE. (She identifies our discarnate souls as Light Beings.)

And so she writes (which includes a response to a reader who had asked if she would keep what she had learned and experienced during her human life after the "human" dies):

The Nanci Danison quote is indeed very much along the lines of this conception of the "afterlife" (in quotes because it isn't truly long term survival of physical death by the human individual self, personality and memories in the sense usually meant by the term). Her descriptions of the NDE visions and imparted information may very well be a partial confirmation. 

It seems strange to me that more thinkers and writers in this area of reincarnation haven't expressed misgivings similar to those that have bothered me, since the reasons seem obvious. Do they even deliberately shy away from following down all the implications?

Of course, as discussed, the actual mechanism of reincarnation may involve the element of choice both on the part of the soul and of the human personality as to whether or not to go ahead with more incarnations, knowing what the consequences entail, it being a set of tradeoffs, loss of individuality versus gain in wisdom and knowledge and experience for instance. With some, perhaps many, souls and human spirits after death choosing not to go back, because of this tradeoff. This would be a ready solution to the skeptic-liked soul population mathematical argument against reincarnation.

But there isn't to my knowlege any record of good channeling or psychic communications imparting this surely important information (regarding the true consequences of reincarnation) to mankind. For instance in the communications of the many talented psychic mediums in the heyday of spiritualism, in the apparent communications of deceased spirits, which communications often don't even mention reincarnation. Of course, the spirits communicated with may have been mostly too recently shoved out of their mortal coil to have acquired such knowledge of their eventual fate as individuals.

[Ninshub]

Of course, as discussed, the actual mechanism of reincarnation may involve the element of choice both on the part of the soul and of the human personality as to whether or not to go ahead with more incarnations

Before really integrating and reflecting on your post, just this aspect of what you're saying jumps out at me.

I'm not sure the model we've been talking about, or the Danison quote, separates radically the soul and the human personality like this sentence seems to imply, and maybe some of the rest of your post?

If the soul (Light Being) contains most of the personality of the human, I don't think there's really a fundamental discontinuity. (What gets lost or "dies" according to Danison's NDE is the incarnated "animal" parts in the instinct for physical survival: fear, violence, self-servingness. She says in that same page of her book that most of the human personality that isn't part of the Light Being/soul is not much different than a domesticated cat or dog. Which isn't to say that Light Beings don't incarnate into cats and dogs either.)

In that sense nbtruthman will continue on as nbtruthman after the death of the "human animal", but as an expanded nbtruthman. The way I'm imagining this is you will feel and be the same "you", but will contact again all those other memories and lives you also went through, and the other abilities and talents you have. You'll be nbtruthman +.

As I mentioned yesterday in another thread, I was watching Rick Archer's interview with "pre-birther" Christian Sundberg. There's a point in the interview where they talk about the self, and this "you" (or "I'') at the common-sense level is what persists through all incarnations. Rick brings up how that contradicts the non-self frequently conceptualized or described in (some) Buddhist traditions, which is very much like what this guy Metzinger seems to be describing. Rick contrasts it with the Vedic notion of a substantive self.

In my view there may be some psychological or phenomenological insights in what those Buddhist understandings provide, but nevertheless the data consistently does point to a self, a you or I.

This discussion starts at around 55:30 in terms of the contradiction with the Buddhist non-self, but you may want to back up a few minutes to hear them discuss in more general terms the persistence of the self across the different "characters" we inhabit throughout the cosmic play.

IMHO, I think the mistake is what people define as "self" is simply an arrogant version of ego, and not your real core being or self, or your actual surviving personality. 

So what people think of as the human self is not the real thing, but a fake ego thing. This ego monster exists, for sure.

Self, described by me as this personality people cling to, is being defined by this warped version of ego that has been shaped and manipulated by society, constructs, relations, religion, and so much more. It exists and leaves a mark in time, a record of all that it did, felt, thought, etc.

If some original personality has been stifled or changed due to interactions after birth, then it is likely not your core being, but a constructed ego personality that can and will add to your original self or core being. 

But this fake ego personality mistakes itself to be the alpha and omega of what will survive, and who it really is. It is nothing but a temporary bubble that thinks itself so important that it will survive, or be a somebody, measuring itself against others, by the career it has, or the wealth and power it accumulates.

IMHO, people don't even know their own core being because they have stepped so far into the bloated ego version that they won't even recognize themselves if they were face to face with the real core being.

This ego is then thinking it is the only thing that is important. The warped ego thinks it is what survives, and all that it holds close or thinks is important should somehow survive as well. 

IMHO, I think the many belief systems that describe versions of dissolving the self are referring to dissolving a fake ego that is overinflated and unreal, and in most instances this ego is simply quieted, or moved away from, using meditation or other systems.

So I would say, human self "as defined by this fake ego version" is hopefully nonexistent after death. It is clearly front and center in most everyone's life, all the time.

As I used to tell my zealot father, "If all the people that think they are going to heaven, are actually going to be there, I certainly don't want to be there forever with them."

Where now I realize that these radical, foaming at the mouth, what I thought were deranged folks, are simply the ego versions that result from the deranged and sick influence on Earth. Egos that will likely not survive death, much less be surviving forever in this beligerent fearmonger form or personality. So I have nothing to worry about in whatever place that is.

Now we can see that allowing your ego to become this foaming at the mouth fundamentalist actually shrinks the brain. So a little more pity flows towards that crowd, since I know they are likely brain damaged.

My two cents: Finding the true and real self, the core of what you really are, is finding what survives.

When you say the "oneness doctrine" Raimo, does that refer to the idea that there are no individual souls but only one Self (or a non-self even? a ground of being?), or to something that says there are individual souls but they're really the same soul, so they have no distinct personalities?

I meant particularly the idea that there are no individual souls.

Before really integrating and reflecting on your post, just this aspect of what you're saying jumps out at me.

I'm not sure the model we've been talking about, or the Danison quote, separates radically the soul and the human personality like this sentence seems to imply, and maybe some of the rest of your post?

If the soul (Light Being) contains most of the personality of the human, I don't think there's really a fundamental discontinuity. (What gets lost or "dies" according to Danison's NDE is the incarnated "animal" parts in the instinct for physical survival: fear, violence, self-servingness. She says in that same page of her book that most of the human personality that isn't part of the Light Being/soul is not much different than a domesticated cat or dog. Which isn't to say that Light Beings don't incarnate into cats and dogs either.)

In that sense nbtruthman will continue on as nbtruthman after the death of the "human animal", but as an expanded nbtruthman. The way I'm imagining this is you will feel and be the same "you", but will contact again all those other memories and lives you also went through, and the other abilities and talents you have. You'll be nbtruthman +.

My view has generally been that there just must of necessity be a sort of radical separation, because the human individuality is so ideosyncratic and peculiar to this person and time, whereas the soul presumably is made up from very many past personalities, which may all be very different from each other in their particularities. The "soul personality" must be an amalgam of all this combined with its own special uniqueness, to make up a very different entity. Maybe the problem here is that since I am not conscious of my soul (except rarely and dimly in altered states of consciousness, in the form of intuitions and guidance and encouragement), I instinctively identify myself as the human being nbtruthman. 

Maybe a way to attempt to analyze this is to consider this moment in time, in which I exist as a very limited human center of consciousness. Presumably, also at this moment in time there must also exist a very much greater and more complex center of soul consciousness. A vastly greater being than myself that considers this "mystery" a silly thing to worry about and spend energy on. Kenneth Ring speculated that this may be the "Being of Light" often vividly sensed during deep NDEs. Two separate beings existing simultaneously.

As I have said previously, I agree that there is a persistent "self" that transfers from life to life. But it at least appears due to simple logic, to not be anything we can identify with as meaningfully encompassing what is important to us in ourselves. The simple sense of "I am me" would seem to be undifferentiated and identical to all the other "I am me's". They all seem to be "one" in the mystical sense.  

What is most important to us as human beings is our unique human individuality, which is very much more than the simple sense that "I am me". It encompasses our unique human personality, memories and body identity. 

What this perhaps fallible chain of reasoning leads to is that when reincarnation is involved, as far as human beings are concerned there is no meaningful persistent self from life to life. Therefore, no meaningful (in the long term) survival of physical death, since the previous human individuality is snuffed out (except for some buried memories) with each reincarnation. In this interpretation, there is a being with continuity - but it is the soul, which accumulates all the collective memories and wisdom derived from the multiple physical lives, but it at least appears according to this chain of reasoning to be a separate being from the human.

By implication this would not apply to souls that are able to choose not to reincarnate. If such a soul has just one human physical life, the unique individuality of this life would be preserved and continue to be a key part of the unique soul personality, and there would be true afterlife survival. 

Following this train of thought, the different beliefs regarding the truth or not of reincarnation taught by different religions would be seen as all being at least partially true - that is, they differently focus on the different available choices of the souls. For instance the Bahai belief that there is no reincarnation and that the unique human individuality persists in some form forever, would be true for those souls who choose that (not to reincarnate). Eastern religions believing that it is the transcendental "I" that persists forever would also be right, for those souls that choose that existence. 

If this reasoning is faulty I would certainly like to find out where the mistakes lie. It occurs to me that perhaps the key problematic area is my assumption that the simple sense of "I am me" does not encompass my human individuality.

Well, I don't think reasoning in and of itself will arrive at any useful outcome. Everything is dependent upon the initial assumptions. Above, you posit certain things as your starting point. In particular an assertion that whatever is passed from life to life in reincarnation is almost meaningless to us. I have to disagree with that starting point.

My position is that I'm very much the same person as I was in a previous life, having the same values, perspective, interests and things I would consider worth supporting. In addition, my feelings, emotions, pains and joys are the same. As well as that, even my sense organs seem to be the same, not in the physical construction which is trivial but in how the senses are felt, understood, experienced.

The only ways in which I differ from previous lives is things like place of residence, language spoken, education and employment. These things are inevitable, the external world is ever-changing, in a new life one lives in the present. These things are not what defines me. I know from having spent time living for a while in different countries and places in this lifetime that no matter where I am, I'm always me. The external world doesn't define me.

I am entirely comfortable and confident that the real me, who I am right now, does indeed persist from life to life. In fact the very words of that previous sentence are a nonsense since I wrote the word 'life' more than once. But there is only one life, the continuous me.

I'm not attempting to use reason to support my view. It is simply how and what I have experienced.

[Ninshub]

My position is that I'm very much the same person as I was in a previous life, having the same values, perspective, interests and things I would consider worth supporting. In addition, my feelings, emotions, pains and joys are the same.

I'm wondering, though, about people who have memories, like Christian Sundberg, of having been something other than a human, like a bird in his case. I don't know that we could the same thing then?

Also regarding the words values, perspective, interests, these have evolved during your current lifetime and may continue to do so? Do you think the next "lifetime" just starts off where the previous ended in those aspects?

I'm wondering, though, about people who have memories, like Christian Sundberg, of having been something other than a human, like a bird in his case. I don't know that we could the same thing then?

Also regarding the words values, perspective, interests, these have evolved during your current lifetime and may continue to do so? Do you think the next "lifetime" just starts off where the previous ended in those aspects?

On the question of being a different lifeform, I don't really know. Though many times in my dreams I've been running very fast on all fours, where most of the propulsion seems to come from the front legs (arms). It felt joyful and free. I've not been able to identify what sort of animal this might have been, anything from some small rodent or dog or cat-like creature to something as big and heavy as a bison. It all felt perfectly normal. Until I woke up and realised I've never run like that in this lifetime.

You are definitely right about things which change and evolve during the course of this present lifetime. I recognise that that has happened / is happening. I think there is a longer-term part of myself, since some of my interests both in the present and previous lifetime were regarding much simpler ways of life such as a small self-sufficient village or community and time stretching back before written history. Some of that seems to permeate things long-term. But also as you suggested, to an extent I consider I continued this life from where I left off last time. Not so much as a child, but really as I moved into adulthood and gained autonomy over my own decisions and way of life. That's when the past-self seemed to dominate for a while, and gradually integrated so that my past/present were not pulling in different directions. I mean to say during childhood one gains a certain degree of momentum, may be moving quite fast along a path. Integrating that with a past-life self was a disturbance. But I recognise that the past-self was there all along, even from the early years, just not recognised as such.

[Laird]

My view has generally been that there just must of necessity be a sort of radical separation

I've expressed this before, and we've discussed/debated it in the past, but I feel it useful to express my disagreement again, here:

Your view that the incarnated human personality has a separate consciousness to that of its soul (i.e., its higher self, which is not incarnated) makes no sense to me. This implies two selves, which, obviously, then, are not identical. One's "soul" in this case would, then, be a distinct self, but this is inimical to the definition of a soul, which is one's own self, not some other, distinct self.

You're of course free to subscribe to this understanding, but, in my view, you breach with reason when you - whether explicitly or implicitly - identify this separate soul-self as that of the incarnated human personality. It is by your definition not identical - it is a separate self.

[Ninshub]

Laird, given that, do you think the model we had been discussing earlier in this thread, for example with the Ford Model T analogy, is incompatible with your view?