Is the human self nonexistent?

[Ninshub]

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.

I still don't understand why you assume that those would be "lost". Like Valmar eloquently stated, you'd just access other features of yourself that you were dissociated from (not remembering), but those "trials and tribulations and successes and joys" would still exist as experiences you've had. Except now you'd be aware that you've a whole other bunch of trials and tribulations and successes and joys as well, and maybe other kinds of experiences we can't humanly conceive as well.

I still don't understand why you assume that those would be "lost". Like Valmar eloquently stated, you'd just access other features of yourself that you were dissociated from (not remembering), but those "trials and tribulations and successes and joys" would still exist as experiences you've had. Except now you'd be aware that you've a whole other bunch of trials and tribulations and successes and joys as well, and maybe other kinds of experiences we can't humanly conceive as well.

This seems so convoluted to me.  I can't even imagine this superSelf.  Doesn't mean its not possible, but I get the angst about this explanation and its ambiguity/implication as it relates to the only personhood we've known (i.e., our human self, the individual).  I don't know who that superSelf is or would be, but it doesn't seem like it would be "me".

[Ninshub]

This seems so convoluted to me.  I can't even imagine this superSelf.  Doesn't mean its not possible, but I get the angst about this explanation and its ambiguity/implication as it relates to the only personhood we've known (i.e., our human self, the individual).  I don't know who that superSelf is or would be, but it doesn't seem like it would be "me".

Let's put aside concepts like "superSelf". Can you simply "imagine" being the exact you that you are, after your body dies, and suddenly accessing these memories of other lifetimes you've had, other experiences, including experiences that have taken place outside the physical? Like friends you have outside the physical realm that you had simply been veiled in remembering? Does that still seem convoluted to you?

I still don't understand why you assume that those would be "lost". Like Valmar eloquently stated, you'd just access other features of yourself that you were dissociated from (not remembering), but those "trials and tribulations and successes and joys" would still exist as experiences you've had. Except now you'd be aware that you've a whole other bunch of trials and tribulations and successes and joys as well, and maybe other kinds of experiences we can't humanly conceive as well.

Let's indulge in some psychosexual hypotheticals. Let's say a person in one life is a very straight heterosexual with a pronounced abhorrence of male-male and female-female sexual activity. His next reincarnation is as a homosexual. He grows up conflicted to some extent, but still definitely in that camp. He passes from this world, and merges with or expands into his higher self soul self. Now, his basic expanded soul personality will somehow encompass both sexual orientations, with the one previous personality absolutely hating gays and being disgusted by their activities (including those of his most recent gay self), and the other, most recent, former gay human self fully accepting them and being very turned off by heterosexuality. A situation where a very deeply held and most basic human personality characteristic (sexual identity) is diametrically opposed in the two successive physical human lives. It doesn't seem to me to be plausible that there could be a graceful and spiritual unfolding and merging in this case.

This would be an extreme example to establish the point; with this issue it is "where the rubber meets the road" so to speak. But it would also apply in general to different unique human personalities supposedly amicably merging or blending or otherwise coming to mutually occupy the psyche of the high soul self. In many cases a supposed union of opposites personality-wise. 

A higher self soul being that could somehow accomplish this within itself would, it seems to me, be something quite alien to our human personalities. 

If the soul being couldn't accomplish this feat gracefully, then this psychosexual hypothetical example seems to me to be a definite predictor of some sort of serious soul psychological disorder, with two successive reincarnated dissociated consciousnesses literally disgusted by and hating their other reincarnated counterpart. Surely the "powers that be" would not allow such a situation to routinely come about in the process of reincarnation into and out of our physical world.

Let's put aside concepts like "superSelf". Can you simply "imagine" being the exact you that you are, after your body dies, and suddenly accessing these memories of other lifetimes you've had, other experiences, including experiences that have taken place outside the physical? Like friends you have outside the physical realm that you had simply been veiled in remembering? Does that still seem convoluted to you?

It's not so simple, as I think I have outlined in my response above.

[Ninshub]

Let's indulge in some psychosexual hypotheticals. Let's say a person in one life is a very straight heterosexual with a pronounced abhorrence of male-male and female-female sexual activity. His next reincarnation is as a homosexual. He grows up conflicted to some extent, but still definitely in that camp. He passes from this world, and merges with or expands into his higher self soul self. Now, his basic expanded soul personality will somehow encompass both sexual orientations, with the one previous personality absolutely hating gays and being disgusted by their activities (including those of his most recent gay self), and the other, most recent, former gay human self fully accepting them and being very turned off by heterosexuality. A situation where a very deeply held and most basic human personality characteristic (sexual identity) is diametrically opposed in the two successive physical human lives. It doesn't seem to me to be plausible that there could be a graceful and spiritual unfolding and merging in this case.

Thanks for the brain teaser, nb. I'll give it more thought and I'll grant you it may not have been as easier as I've made it seem.

Again, I'll give your post more thought before I maybe answer more fully. But one thing that comes to mind immediately in your example, is that I see a problem with viewing that immediate self "abhorring" a certain type of sexual orientation or activity persisting after the death of the physical body. Preferences I can see staying, but "abhorrence" doesn't seem like something that is ever talked about spirits' inclinations, where the nature of the spirit of the self is loving (consciousness = love). So there may be elements that are tied to the human animal and/or the ego (why did this person develop such abhorrence towards something other) that are immediately cast off when the human body dies, and that's before talking about any discarnate personality meeting or merging with an "expansion". But I'm aware that doesn't answer everything you've written here.

A higher self soul being that could somehow accomplish this within itself would, it seems to me, be something quite alien to our human personalities.

I would consider situations like people with dementia who no longer have certain prejudices, or even certain drugs that make people less prejudiced in some way.

It seems a lot of conditioning in this life can fall away just like my "hatred" of Daniel Radcliffe of Harry Potter fame that ended immediately upon my awakening. In the dream though my rivalry felt quite valid, an overwhelming anger that felt totally justified.

What does this mean, though, for identity, if any of our core beliefs have no lasting impact on who we are? That I don't know, though I think we can gain some comfort that the love between people seems to be preserved even if other aspects fall away.

We may have to accept Survival is enough, even if what Survives may seem quite alien to who we are now. For some this is probably a horror, yet for others a blessing...

Let's put aside concepts like "superSelf". Can you simply "imagine" being the exact you that you are, after your body dies, and suddenly accessing these memories of other lifetimes you've had, other experiences, including experiences that have taken place outside the physical? Like friends you have outside the physical realm that you had simply been veiled in remembering? Does that still seem convoluted to you?

That's really hard for me to imagine.

All I know right now is that I'm me.  Its a 1:1 thing.  Mix in these other "memories" of when I was a woman, or a child who died of an illness at 5 years of age, or a disturbed evil man and I don't know how I would think of all that as "experiences I've had".  The "I've" in that case wouldn't be me it seems.  It would be something, dare I say someone?, else.  Right?

[Ninshub]

 I don't know how I would think of all that as "experiences I've had".  The "I've" in that case wouldn't be me it seems.

I hear you. At the same time, I imagine that once you're in that mental space, then it's clear as day for you that those were your memories and experiences as well too.

It's like pre-birther Christian Sandburg having past- and pre-life memories until the age of 6, then finding them again once he meditates at age 30 or so. Suddenly they're there, as real if not more real than his other memories. (He describes them as feeling more real.) He didn't stop feeling like the same himself but obviously his sense of who he thought he was expanded (back).

I think it's because you (we) imagine it from the perspective we have now and it's hard to imagine that experience until you have it.

Let's say you have trauma right but don't know it, and at same point you recover these memories that say your story as you've understood it is only partially correct or missing an important chunk. That will be destabilizing and require possible adjustment but wouldn't you still experience you as the same you?

I also think there's a notion of what we "identify" with in the way you phrase your objection, and obviously even through one's own life here the process of identification is something more malleable and changeable than we assume - see Asian religious practices where it's that sense of identification (thought to be wrong) which is worked on and altered.

I think it's because you (we) imagine it from the perspective we have now and it's hard to imagine that experience until you have it.

There seem to be a lot of "moving parts".  I strongly agree that perspective is an important framework for self.  But, we can imagine changing perspectives.  A person can seemingly change character, going from an egoistic moment of anger - back to kindness when a healing thought intervenes.

The self has a lot of aspects.  I guess I'm old school when self actualization was the perspective to target.  Can you become more your self and hence different?  Is it just changing what you choose to assimilate from your social environment?

Is an Patriots fan a different person if he moves to Philly and roots for the Eagles?  Is the higher mind/self just a different perspective?

In his seminal paper about human motivation (in which he first introduced his hierarchy of needs), Maslow discussed self-actualization by stating, “What a man can be, he must be. This need we may call self-actualization” (Maslow, 1943).

Self-actualization has also been described as:
the psychological process aimed at maximizing the use of a person’s abilities and resources. This process may vary from one person to another.

https://positivepsychology.com/self-actualization/