Ken Wilber on no-self

(Ken Wilber, No Boundary [ http://www.amazon.com/No-Boundary-Ken-Wilber/dp/0394748816 ])

Begin with the sense of hearing. Close your eyes and attend
to the actual process of hearing. Notice all the odd sounds floating
around—birds singing, cars rumbling, crickets chirping, kids laughing,
TV blaring. But with all those sounds, notice that there is one thing
which you cannot hear, no matter how carefully you attend to every
sound. You cannot hear the hearer. That is, in addition to those sounds,
you cannot hear a hearer of those sounds.

You cannot hear a hearer because there isn’t one. What you have
been taught to call a "hearer" is actually just the experience of hearing
itself, and you don’t hear hearing. In reality, there is just a stream of
sounds, and that stream is not split into a subject and an object. There is
no boundary here.

If you let the sensation of being a "hearer" inside the skull dissolve
into hearing itself, you might find your "self" merging with the entire
world of "outside sounds." As one Zen Master exclaimed upon his enlightenment,
"When I heard the temple hell ring, suddenly there was no
bell and no I, just the ringing." It was through such an experiment that
Avalokiteshvara is said to have gained his enlightenment, for in
giving awareness to the process of hearing, he realized that there was no
separate self, no hearer, apart from the stream of hearing itself. When
you try to hear the subjective hearer, all you find are objective sounds.
And that means that you do not hear sounds, you are those sounds. The
hearer is every sound which is heard. It is not a separate entity which
stands back and hears hearing.

The same is true of the process of seeing. As I look carefully at the
visual field, it seems almost to hang in space, suspended in nothingness.
Yet it consists of an infinitely rich pattern of interlaced lights, colors, and
shades, forming themselves into a mountain here, a cloud there, a stream
below. But of all the sights I can see, there is still that one thing which I
cannot see, no matter how the eyes strain. I cannot see the seer of this
visual field.

The more I try to see the seer, the more its absence begins to puzzle
me. For years it seemed perfectly natural to assume that I was the seer
which saw sights. But the moment I go in search of the seer, I find no
trace of it. In fact, if I persist in trying to see the seer, all I find are things
which are seen. This simply means that I, the "seer," do not see sights—
rather I, the "seer," am identical to all those sights now present. The socalled
seer is nothing other than everything which is seen. If I look at a
tree, there is not one experience called "tree" and another experience
called "seeing the tree." There is just the single experience of seeing-thetree.
I do not see this seeing any more than I smell smelling or taste
tasting.

It seems that whenever we look for a self apart from experience, it
vanishes into experience. When we look for the experiences, we find
only another experience—the subject and object always turn out to be
one. Because this is a rather unnerving experience, you might now be
feeling somewhat confused, as you sit thinking all of this over. But push
onward just a bit. As you are now thinking about this, can you also find a
thinker who is thinking about this?

That is, is there a thinker who thinks the thought, "I am confused," or
is there just the thought, "I am confused"? Surely there is just the present
thought, because if there were also a thinker of the thought, would you
then think about the thinker who is thinking the thought? It seems
obvious that what we mistakenly believe to be a thinker is really nothing
other than the stream of present thoughts.

Thus, when the present thought was "I am confused," you were not
at the same time aware of a thinker who was thinking, "I am confused."

There was just the present thought alone—"I am confused." When
you then looked for the thinker of that thought, all you found was
another present thought, namely "I am thinking I am confused." Never
did you find a thinker apart from the present thought, which is only to
say that the two are identical.

This is precisely why the sages advise us not to try to destroy the
"self," but simply to look for it, because whenever we look for it all we
find is its prior absence. But even if we have begun to understand that
there is no separate hearer, no taster, no seer, and no thinker, we are still
likely to find within ourselves a type of irreducible, core feeling of being
a separate and isolated self. There is still that sensation of being separate
from the world out there. There is still that gut feeling that I somehow
know as my inner "self." Even if I can’t see, taste, or hear my self, I
definitely feel my self.

Well, can you find, in addition to the feeling you are now calling
your "self," a feeler who is doing the feeling? If it seems that you can,
can you then feel the feeler who is doing the feeling? Again, that core
sensation of being a feeler who has feelings is itself just another feeling.
The "feeler" is nothing but a present feeling, just as the thinker is just a
present thought and the taster is just present tastes. In this case, too, there
is no separate feeler different from present feelings—and there never
was.

Thus the inescapable conclusion starts to dawn on us: there is no
separate self set apart from the world. You have always assumed you
were a separate experiencer, but the moment you actually go in search of
it, it vanishes into experience. As Alan Watts puts it, "There is simply
experience. There is not something or someone experiencing experience!
You do not feel feeling, think thoughts, or sense sensations any more
than you hear hearing, see sight, or smell smelling. ‘I feel fine’ means
that a fine feeling is present. It does not mean that there is one thing
called an ‘I’ and another separate thing called a feeling, so that when you
bring them together this ‘I’ feels the fine feelings. There are no feelings
but present feelings, and whatever feeling is present is ‘I.’ No one ever
found an ‘I’ apart from some present experience, or some experience
apart from an ‘I’—which is only to say that the two are the same thing."

Now when you understand that there is no gap between "you" and
your experiences, doesn’t it start to become obvious that there is no gap
between "you" and the world which is experienced? If you are your
experiences, you are the world so experienced. You do not have a sensation
of a bird, you are the sensation of a bird. You do not have an
experience of a table, you are the experience of the table. You do not
hear the sound of thunder, you are the sound of thunder. The inner
sensation called "you" and the outer sensation called "the world" are one
and the same sensation. The inner subject and the outer object are two
names for one feeling, and this is not something you should feel, it is the
only thing you can feel.

That means that your state of consciousness right now is, whether
you realize it or not, unity consciousness. Right now you already are the
cosmos, you already are the totality of your present experience. Your
present state is always unity consciousness because the separate self,
which seems to be the major obstacle to unity consciousness, is always
an illusion. You needn’t try to destroy the separate self because it isn’t
there in the first place. All you really have to do is look for it, and you
won’t find it. That very not-finding is itself an acknowledgement of unity
consciousness. In other words, whenever you look for your "self" and
don’t find it, you momentarily fall into your prior and real state of unity
consciousness.