A reader’s question (paraphrased)
A reader writes to share a spontaneous and profound spiritual realization—a "personal gnosis" involving a healing journey into the unknown. Through this experience, the reader discovered a state beyond words, names, and concepts: a neutral, unlimited "true self" or Spirit that permeates everything.
Based on this direct experience, the reader questions the Buddhist concept of Anatta (non-self). They suggest that while one must indeed empty oneself of the "false self" and its poisons, this does not negate the existence of a True Self or God within. The reader feels that many public teachings (both Hindu and Buddhist) create unnecessary divisions and may miss the full truth of what we truly are.
Specifically, the reader describes their current state as a "median point": retaining uniqueness and individuality beyond the confines of the false body and ego, yet simultaneously realizing that separation is an illusion. They use a powerful metaphor: they are not merely a drop merged into the ocean of God, but rather, "the entire ocean in a single drop."
After reading through some of the shared articles on the blog, the reader noted that their own experience resonated deeply with the descriptions found in the texts. They closed by asking for my perspective on their insights—"I take it that you do not see that there is a self at all?"—and inquired about my own journey and whether I was the author of the writings they had just read.
My Reply
Hi,
Thank you for sharing your experience in such detail. What you described—the realization of a neutral, unlimited true self that permeates all, beyond all words and names—is a very profound and authentic realization.
In the framework I am sharing, this is often called the realization of the "I AM," Pure Presence, or the Eternal Witness. It is a powerful awakening to the "Spirit" or Pure Presence.
To answer your specific question: "I take it that you do not see that there is a self at all?"
It is important to clarify that the further insights into Anatman (Non-Self) are not a denial or rejection of the realization of pure Presence that you had. We are not saying that this luminosity or knowingness does not exist.
Rather, Anatta is a refinement of insight that discovers the empty nature of Presence.
In the initial phase of practice, and even after the initial awakening into I AM/Eternal Witness, the Witnessing Presence seems to be behind all contents as an underlying background or ground of being. That duality of context and content collapses in further realizations. In further realization, it is seen that there is never an Agent, a Watcher, an Observer, apart from moment to moment luminous manifestation.
It shifts the understanding from seeing Presence as a "Background Source" or "Container" (the Ocean) behind phenomena (the waves), to realizing that the waves are the dynamic Presencing ("Impermanence is Buddha-Nature") without an ultimate background behind them.
Here is how this specific progression is viewed in our context, using some quotes from John Tan (Thusness) that address your exact situation:
1. We do not deny the "I AM" / Spirit realization; we refine the View of it.
You mentioned Buddhism might describe it incorrectly as "empty." In this context, "Empty" does not mean a void or nothingness. It means "no inherent existence of its own apart from the moment to moment conditions."
Thusness (2007): "I have always said it is not the denial of eternal witness. But what exactly is that eternal witness? ... There is Witnessing. Witnessing is the manifestation. There is no witness [separate from] witnessing manifestation."
Thusness (2010): "It is not that there is no awareness... can u deny Witnessing? ... can you deny that certainty of being? ... then there is nothing wrong with it... how could you deny your very own existence? ... there is nothing wrong experiencing directly without intermediary the pure sense of existence. After this direct experience, you should refine your understanding, your view, your insights... u do not deny the witness, u refine your insight of it."
2. On your experience of the "Ocean" and the "Drop"
You wrote about being "not just a drop merged into the ocean... but the entire ocean in a single drop." The insight of Anatta takes this one step further to remove the subtle reifications of the "drop" (individuality) and the "ocean" (universal). Buddhist realization does not erase diversity or collapse it into a single substance or universal mind (we do not adopt the view of a universal undifferentiated consciousness).
Regarding this transition from a background view to an empty view, Dr. Greg Goode wrote:
"It looks your Bahiya Sutta experience helped you see awareness in a different way, more .... empty. You had a background in a view that saw awareness as more inherent or essential or substantive?
I had an experience like this too. I was reading a sloka in Nagarjuna's treatise about the "prior entity," and I had been meditating on "emptiness is form" intensely for a year. These two threads came together in a big flash. In a flash, I grokked the emptiness of awareness as per Madhyamika. This realization is quite different from the Advaitic oneness-style realization. It carries one out to the "ten-thousand things" in a wonderful, light and free and kaleidoscopic, playful insubstantial clarity and immediacy. No veils, no holding back. No substance or essence anywhere, but love and directness and intimacy everywhere..."
I also wrote about this distinction previously:
"Awareness when reified becomes a whole containing everything as its parts, like the ocean and its waves. But when you deconstruct the wave and ocean, the whole and parts, it is just the radiance and clarity of pellucidity of sound, taste, colors of the imputed notion of wave and ocean. Ocean and waves, whole and parts, are mere dependent designations, merely conventional without any self-essence/inherent existence.
Awareness is a name just like weather is a name denoting rain, wind, sunshine, etc., and not a container or singular substance pervading them or transforming or modulating as them. Likewise, awareness is not an eternal singular substance pervading or containing or even modulating as everything. What is seen, heard, sensed are clear and vivid, pellucid and crystal, and 'awareness' is just a name denoting just that, not a diverse manifestation pervaded by a single ontological awareness that is non-dual with everything.
Eventually, awareness is seen through as having its own reality and forgotten into the pellucidity of appearance, not just a state but an insight. As a teacher once said, 'If you see that awareness is none other than everything, and that none of those things are separate "things" at all, why even use the word awareness anymore? All you are left with is the world, your life, the diversity of experience itself.'"
This is echoed in the Zen tradition as well. Ted Biringer commenting on Zen Master Dogen wrote:
"...According to Dogen, this “oceanic-body” does not contain the myriad forms, nor is it made up of myriad forms – it is the myriad forms themselves. The same instruction is provided at the beginning of Shobogenzo, Gabyo (pictured rice-cakes) where, he asserts that, “as all Buddhas are enlightenment” (sho, or honsho), so too, “all dharmas are enlightenment” which he says does not mean they are simply “one” nature or mind.”
“In Dogen’s view, the only reality is reality that is actually experienced as particular things at specific times. There is no “tile nature” apart from actual “tile forms,” there is no “essential Baso” apart from actual instances of “Baso experience.” When Baso sits in zazen, “zazen” becomes zazen, and “Baso” becomes Baso. Real instances of Baso sitting in zazen is real instances of Baso and real instances of zazen – when Baso eats rice, Baso is really Baso and eating rice is really eating rice.”
And from Zen Master Dogen’s The Great Ocean Samadhi chapter in the Shobogenzo:
"The Buddha once said in verse:
Merely of various elements is this body of Mine composed.
The time of its arising is merely an arising of elements;
The time of its vanishing is merely a vanishing of elements.
As these elements arise, I do not speak of the arising of an ‘I’,
And as these elements vanish, I do not speak of the vanishing of an ‘I’.
Previous instants and succeeding instants are not a series of instants that depend on each other;
Previous elements and succeeding elements are not a series of elements that stand against each other.
To give all of this a name, I call it ‘the meditative state that bears the seal of the Ocean’.
...The Master’s saying, “One that contains all that exists,” expresses what the Ocean is. The point he is making is not that there is some single thing that contains all that exists, but rather that It is all contained things. And he is not saying that the Great Ocean is what contains all existing things, but rather that what is expressing ‘all contained things’ is simply the Great Ocean. Though we do not know what It is, It is everything that exists for the moment... What we call the Ocean of our Buddha Nature and what we call the Ocean of Vairochana are simply synonymous with ‘all that exists’."
3. Why we move from "True Self" to "No Self"
It is not to negate your "uniqueness" or individuality in the conventional sense (memories, personality, trajectory). It is to see that the "Spirit" is not a static thing hiding behind the flow of life, but is the Flow of self-luminous (self-knowing) and spontaneous manifestation itself.
Thusness (2008): "Practitioners should never mistake this as the true Buddha Mind! "I AMness" is the pristine awareness... But what exactly is this “witness” we are talking about? It is the manifestation itself! It is the appearance itself! There is no Source to fall back [to], the Appearance is the Source!"
It is vital to understand that "No Self" does not mean a rejection or denial of conventional selves:
“Buddha never used the term "self" to refer to an unconditioned, permanent, ultimate entity. He also never asserted that there was no conventional "self," the subject of transactional discourse. So, it is very clear in the sutras that the Buddha negated an ultimate self and did not negate a conventional self.” – Dzogchen teacher Acarya Malcolm Smith, 2020
“Anatman is the negation of an unconditioned, permanent, ultimate entity that moves from one temporary body to another. It is not the negation of "Sam," "Fred," or "Jane" used as a conventional designation for a collection of aggregates. Since the Buddha clearly states in many Mahāyāna sūtras, "all phenomena" are not self, and since everything is included there, including buddhahood, therefore, there are no phenomena that can be called a self, and since there are nothing outside of all phenomena, a "self," other than an arbitrary designation, does not exist.” – Dzogchen teacher Acarya Malcolm Smith
As stated in the Vajira Sutta:
“Why do you believe there’s such a thing as a ‘sentient being’?
Māra, is this your theory?
This is just a pile of conditions,
you won’t find a sentient being here.
When the parts are assembled
we use the word ‘chariot’.
So too, when the aggregates are present
‘sentient being’ is the convention we use.
But it’s only suffering that comes to be,
lasts a while, then disappears.
Naught but suffering comes to be,
naught but suffering ceases.”
Summary
So, to summarize: We do not deny the luminous, spiritual nature you have realized. We are pointing out that this "True Self" is not separate from the "false flesh body" or the world. The mountains, the rivers, and your very body are that Spirit manifesting. There is no "You" inside looking out at it; You are the happening. And as the great Zen Master Dogen said about his awakening, “I came to realize clearly that the mind is not other than mountains, rivers, the great wide earth, sun, moon, stars”.
As I wrote back in 2010:
"Originally I wrote a long post but I have shortened it to a few points based on what Thusness said, which makes it much clearer...
In short: there is no false self nor true self, there is only 5 aggregates.
Do not think that that there is a problem in the five aggregates. There is no problem with the aggregates, the 'problem' lies only in the illusion that there is a self. The 5 aggregates when experienced without the agent (watcher, thinker, doer, etc) is a completely new dimension. They are the Buddha Nature.
However, when experienced with a sense/illusion of self, whatever arises (all the aggregates and 18 dhatus) appears to be problematic. In truth there are no problems whatsoever, only the wrong understanding that self exist.
It should be noted furthermore, that even while the sense of self is present, there is still in truth no-self/perceiver apart from perceived. No-self is a dharma seal, an ever-present nature of reality.
On the most direct path, there is no one to let go and no-thing to be let go of and hence no 'how to let go'. Reality is 'letting go' at all moments. There is only what arises and subsides (self-liberates) every moment according to conditions, luminous-empty phenomena roll on with no one at the center that can seek nor distant himself (since there is no 'self') from the self-knowing transience.
However if we are unable to arise this insight and with the tendencies still strong, then we have no choice but resort to the gradual path of practice. Resorting to watching the arising and ceasing of the 5 aggregates as if there is a separate watcher but with the right view that there is no self apart from the aggregates. By practicing this way, insight into Anatta can still arise eventually.
But if the path consists of practice without the right view, almost without fail it will result in Advaita sort of experience."
I will leave you with this verse from the Shurangama Sutra which affirms that the five aggregates themselves are the Buddha Nature:
"All floating dust and illusory appearances arise and perish at that very locus. They are falsely named 'appearances,' yet their true nature is the Luminous Essence of Marvelous Awakening.
So it is with the Five Skandhas, the Six Entrances, the Twelve Loci, and the Eighteen Realms. The union of causes and conditions generates their illusory arising; their separation results in the illusory name of extinction.
One fails to realize that arising and ceasing, coming and going, are fundamentally the Tathāgatagarbha—the Ever-Abiding, Wondrous Clarity, the Unmoved, All-Pervading, Wondrous Nature of True Suchness.
Within this True and Constant Nature, seek as you may for coming and going, delusion and enlightenment, or birth and death, they are completely unattainable."
I hope this clarifies that this is not a rejection of your gnosis, but a pointer toward the non-dual and empty nature of that Spirit.
p.s. I'm Soh, and Thusness (John Tan) is my mentor... I've been through similar stages in my journey as the first link (7 stages) with some minor differences (e.g. I didn't go through stage 3).
The three links I passed you above are my mentor's words.
However I have written about my journey here: My E-book/E-journal
And I have written other articles on the blog that may be of interest:
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