Is the human self nonexistent?

[Laird]

So it isn't annihilation of self necessarily, but the attachment to this current "dream" is what fades?

That would make sense of the "realer than real life" experience of NDErs. Just like this life is, in general, "realer than our dreams", so we can "awaken" into an ever realer experience.

Could the hierarchy be akin to dreams within dreams?

When we die here, is it possible that over time we "wake up" to our true self? So it isn't annihilation of self necessarily, but the attachment to this current "dream" is what fades?

I thought of dreams that express flying, where they feel stronger and more colorful.  True self  - all my context jumps to Herman Hesse's art trying to wrestle with it.  

 “I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?” 

The answer for myself was all the prompting came from human sources, the wolf in us, the saint in us, the seeker and the sinner both.  The real true self will be/is /was the integration of the callings with the life to be lived.

not that I have done any better than the Steppenwolf and his fantasies

A thought -- is the true self a projection of a possible spiritually evolved self .  Or maybe just the standard good-old guardian angel.

Given that, I rewatched it and extracted a few quotes. I'll stick to my conclusions in respect to the theme of human self vs higher self, and in particular whether the former is merely temporary, and is obliterated upon physical death, perhaps by being "absorbed" into the higher self. Obviously, there is a lot more that one could conclude from this NDE, both as a particular experience and - as tim points out - as a good representative of NDEs in general.

Here's the first quote that I think is relevant: "There is no absolute death in the conventional sense of the word. There is only the transition from an embodied to a disembodied state. When we die, we leave the body behind, and we receive clarity on what is most important in life."

Is there anything in this quote that indicates "absorption into the higher self" at death? If so, I don't see it. All I see is "transition from embodiment to disembodiment", not "transition and then you're gobbled up into the higher self and cease to exist anymore".

Next up:

"I had communication with my higher spiritual being, which I understood to be my higher self, as if a part of me had always been there, inhabiting this other world. This spiritual being or my higher self knew everything about me and had a purely benevolent, supportive, and confident attitude towards me."

This describes Josef's understanding of his higher self. It is not directly relevant to the question of what happens after death, but sets the context for the next quote, which is a communication from that higher self:

"I was told that if I were to continue into the light the energetic connection to my body would dissolve, thus, my physical body would cease to exist, and that a return to my Earthly life would not be possible."

Again, I see nothing about the absorption or otherwise annihilation of the supposedly merely "temporary" human self. I don't expect such an understanding to have been left out if in fact it was the case.

There does seem to be a contradiction in this account, between his realizing that "there is no absolute death", and the implication of the communication with a clearly separate (at that moment) higher self. It seems to me that this implication is logically that either he would subsequently at some time or another slowly or abruptly be absorbed into his soul being and lose at least a major part of his human individuality, or he would continue indefinitely as his human self. 

The latter option seems to me to be unlikely because of reincarnation. If this is the case, that is, indefinite continuation of his human self,  that would mean the afterlife realm would be teeming with multitudes of unique individual human selves, one generated for each human incarnation.

Therefore, following through the implications seems to bring us to the apparently more likely option, that after each incarnation this most recent human individual self is absorbed into the soul being, in the process losing much of its individuality. 

I actually would like to see how my reasoning is incorrect, as it certainly isn't reassuring at least on the surface. 

One interesting clue to a resolution of this might be in Ron Scolastico's Guides' (somewhat impenetrable) explanation of this, that yes, there is a gradual merging of the human individuality with the soul, but that it  is a process completely devoid of suffering, where the human self feels itself expanding in knowledge and remembered experience, and wisdom, until it literally realizes it is the far vaster soul, but during all of this process somehow never losing the sense that "I am me".

That would mean that the truth is that the reality of a separation between the human self and the higher soul self would be the temporary situation, to be resolved after physical death.

All that said, your remark "...I see nothing (in this NDE account) about the absorption or otherwise annihilation of the supposedly merely "temporary" human self. I don't expect such an understanding to have been left out if in fact it was the case.." might have the explanation that the higher soul self strongly wants the human individual self not to even transiently suffer, and therefore to be reassuring, deliberately leaves out this crucial information.

[Ninshub]

There does seem to be a contradiction in this account, between his realizing that "there is no absolute death", and the implication of the communication with a clearly separate (at that moment) higher self. It seems to me that this implication is logically that either he would subsequently at some time or another slowly or abruptly be absorbed into his soul being and lose at least a major part of his human individuality, or he would continue indefinitely as his human self.

I'm not seeing why you're concluding ths. First of all, I think if we're still using the word "human" after the death of the physical body, there's something not quite right there. But secondly and more essentially, if Josef is "absorbed" into his higher self (or merges), why would that imply loss of individuality? What if nothing is lost (except things like fear of survival appropriate to earthly creatures who believe themselves to be separate and finite) but everything about Josef is simply retained within his higher self?

Or maybe I'd understand better what are example of that "individuality" you assume would be lost.

btw, I do intuit Josef's experience in a merger hypothesis that the sense of "me" would not be lost - there would be a seemless, immediate transition where "Josef" would now just realize he's got all these extra other memories as well, as well as skills and abilities.

When I personally imagine this, I experience no fear of annihilation whatsoever. I'm more looking forward to have a broader understanding, regaining and remembering memories and abilities, in addition to the loss of fear and sense of freedom regained from leaving the constraints of physical life, earthly society, etc. (I do not look forward, however, to losing attachments I have to things like earthly music, etc.)

[Laird]

There does seem to be a contradiction in this account, between his realizing that "there is no absolute death", and the implication of the communication with a clearly separate (at that moment) higher self. It seems to me that this implication is logically that either he would subsequently at some time or another slowly or abruptly be absorbed into his soul being and lose at least a major part of his human individuality, or he would continue indefinitely as his human self. 

The latter option seems to me to be unlikely because of reincarnation.

I don't understand this assertion. Why, in your view, could the "human self" not reincarnate, albeit with "the veil" for the most part then descending to temporarily deprive it of its memories of past incarnations?

If this is the case, that is, indefinite continuation of his human self,  that would mean the afterlife realm would be teeming with multitudes of unique individual human selves, one generated for each human incarnation.

Not on the possibility I implicitly suggest above via my question.

btw, I do intuit Josef's experience in a merger hypothesis that the sense of "me" would not be lost - there would be a seemless, immediate transition where "Josef" would now just realize he's got all these extra other memories as well, as well as skills and abilities.

Indeed. This makes sense to me, on spiritually-intuitive level.

The Soul is the whole, with the human ego merely being a dissociated portion of that whole. When the human ego leaves this reality... it's more like the veil just melting away, as if... a curtain is raised to reveal that we were our whole Soul the entire time, but we just didn't have that perspective.

But, when we do regain that perspective, it becomes as if we were looking from the Soul perspective the entire time, because technically, we... were.

Maybe there's a better way to word this, but I'm not in a particular clear frame of mind right now, so this'll do.

There does seem to be a contradiction in this account, between his realizing that "there is no absolute death", and the implication of the communication with a clearly separate (at that moment) higher self. It seems to me that this implication is logically that either he would subsequently at some time or another slowly or abruptly be absorbed into his soul being and lose at least a major part of his human individuality, or he would continue indefinitely as his human self. 

The latter option seems to me to be unlikely because of reincarnation. If this is the case, that is, indefinite continuation of his human self,  that would mean the afterlife realm would be teeming with multitudes of unique individual human selves, one generated for each human incarnation.

Therefore, following through the implications seems to bring us to the apparently more likely option, that after each incarnation this most recent human individual self is absorbed into the soul being, in the process losing much of its individuality. 

I actually would like to see how my reasoning is incorrect, as it certainly isn't reassuring at least on the surface.

There is no "absorption" that occurs, because the human-self is merely an aspect of the Soul-self. The soul-self knows and experiences the human-self in the most immediate fashion, because it **is** the human-self, in a very real sense. The human-self is merely dissociated in its awareness of the whole, while the whole is perfectly aware of the human-self, and all of its thoughts, emotions, struggles and experiences.

One interesting clue to a resolution of this might be in Ron Scolastico's Guides' (somewhat impenetrable) explanation of this, that yes, there is a gradual merging of the human individuality with the soul, but that it  is a process completely devoid of suffering, where the human self feels itself expanding in knowledge and remembered experience, and wisdom, until it literally realizes it is the far vaster soul, but during all of this process somehow never losing the sense that "I am me".

That would mean that the truth is that the reality of a separation between the human self and the higher soul self would be the temporary situation, to be resolved after physical death.

All that said, your remark "...I see nothing (in this NDE account) about the absorption or otherwise annihilation of the supposedly merely "temporary" human self. I don't expect such an understanding to have been left out if in fact it was the case.." might have the explanation that the higher soul self strongly wants the human individual self not to even transiently suffer, and therefore to be reassuring, deliberately leaves out this crucial information.

The quote is talking about the process of the human-self expanding until it recalls that was the Soul-self the entire time, in all its vastness.

There is no absorption or annihilation taking place.

The only suffering that might possibly occur is the panicking of the human-self that because it is becoming so much more, that it will "lose" itself to that widening ocean. It's merely due to not recalling its full nature, and so, not understanding what is occurring, until it starts to recall enough during the transition for it to click that it is merely returning to what it really is ~ a vast Soul. The human-self merely loses the veil, the curtains, that were there, allowing it to realize that its existence was always that of the Soul-self. Nothing is lost ~ there is only a gain, a recollection of being a vast Soul-self that had been forgotten due to incarnation.

The information probably isn't deliberately left out... it's more that it can be... unfathomable to comprehend, to a human-self whose awareness is limited due to the nature of incarnation.

I have some understanding of the process, having reasoned about it on spiritual-intuitive level, but more than this surface level comprehension... I just hit a nice big wall in understanding that I cannot progress further past. It's not a deliberate barrier ~ just me not being able to understand from this human-bound perspective.

The title of this thread places the words 'human' and 'self' adjacent to one another, inviting us to believe that there is a thing called the 'human self' as a single noun. However, in normal life, we just use the word 'self' on its own. It describes something which we can understand and relate to. Adding additional words such as 'purple' to give the term 'purple self' would be a similar use of language.

Shall we than ask: is the purple self non-existent? This seems an unnecessary question. What we really want to know is this: is the self non-existent? intuitively we accept that it does indeed exist. The next questions become, what happens when we die and is there such a thing as reincarnation?

All the evidence from people's actual experiences seem to say that when we die, the self can expand, the limitations of being encased in a too-small body with its limited senses and other restrictions fall away. That is, the self survives and can recognise itself in its greater form.

As an aside now, and moving completely off-topic from this discussion. One of my own personal aims has long been to bring some of that larger self into this world, to recognise not just in an abstract sense but as a real practical thing, the greater aspect of myself and of all of us. This is the human condition, sometimes we struggle, other times we rejoice, and some of the time we may forget what we really are, feel ourselves to be smaller and less than we really are. When sometimes in an NDE a person encounters a great shining being, it may turn out to be just another deceased human, seen without limitations. So one of my goals is to recognise the magnificence that we already are, and to encourage others to bring it forth, here in this world.

I don't understand this assertion. Why, in your view, could the "human self" not reincarnate, albeit with "the veil" for the most part then descending to temporarily deprive it of its memories of past incarnations?

If the unique to that life human self simply reincarnates, for each Earth life, afterward each time remaining temporarily in the afterlife and merging with the higher soul self prior to the next reincarnation, then you have a succession of different temporary human selves, with the only continuity formed by the persistent higher soul self which is the separate being that is accumulating experience and wisdom and past unique human individualities, capsulized merely as memories not conscious sentient beings. But the human is not benefiting from this. This would be a great injustice to the human self - all the benefit of the blood sweat and tears of physical life going to the soul, not the human. I didn't want to suggest that option, and don't think it can be the truth. But it is a logical possibility that needs to be eliminated by some greater perhaps intuitive wisdom.

I'm not seeing why you're concluding ths. First of all, I think if we're still using the word "human" after the death of the physical body, there's something not quite right there. But secondly and more essentially, if Josef is "absorbed" into his higher self (or merges), why would that imply loss of individuality? What if nothing is lost (except things like fear of survival appropriate to earthly creatures who believe themselves to be separate and finite) but everything about Josef is simply retained within his higher self?

Or maybe I'd understand better what are example of that "individuality" you assume would be lost.

btw, I do intuit Josef's experience in a merger hypothesis that the sense of "me" would not be lost - there would be a seemless, immediate transition where "Josef" would now just realize he's got all these extra other memories as well, as well as skills and abilities.

When I personally imagine this, I experience no fear of annihilation whatsoever. I'm more looking forward to have a broader understanding, regaining and remembering memories and abilities, in addition to the loss of fear and sense of freedom regained from leaving the constraints of physical life, earthly society, etc. (I do not look forward, however, to losing attachments I have to things like earthly music, etc.)

I know and highly value myself as the unique human person I am, with a unique combination of personality characteristics and talents and achievements and failures and limitations, etc. etc. It is incomprehensible that I would not sense it as a great loss to no longer be that person I struggled to survive and persevere with all my life, with so many trials and tribulations and successes and joys, etc. etc. This continuity of personality formation and unique experience would then become just a part of a greater but alien being, rather than the unique integrated whole that I know myself to be.