What Is Splitting
and how can it be healed?
Q: Hi, Robert. I would very much like to understand what you call “splitting” in more depth. Would you write something or point me towards something concise that you have already said on the matter, please? I ask because when I’ve heard you speak of splitting, I think you are naming the state I was in for some years, which I was mentored/bullied into by an “enlightened” man, and I’m still trying to understand and deconstruct that period of my life.
Thanks in advance if you can help me here, and for all the things you share on Facebook. They have been really valuable to me. Appreciation.
A: Thanks, Toby. It always feels good to hear that my work has been helpful. You are most welcome.
The most basic case of splitting is dividing this aliveness into experiences (perceptions, feelings, and thoughts) on the one hand, and the experiencer (myself) who “has” experiences on the other hand.
The subject/verb/object structure of language suggests that split. For example, I (the subject) see (verb) a tree (the object). But is there really an "I" who sees a tree, or is the seeing and the tree part of "I?" And aren't the seer, the seeing, and the seen all mutually codependent (without any one of them, the others would not exist)? Without any perceptions, feelings, and thoughts, would there even be an "I?"
Many so-called “enlightened” people, such as the one who bullied you, are self-hypnotically lost in splitting. To imagine oneself “enlightened” is foolishness, not enlightenment. In my experience, no discrete, autonomous “myself” actually exists, so there is never a “myself” to be enlightened.
What we call “myself” arises moment-by-moment, composed of various separate elements that are not necessarily related and which have no ultimate staying power, so any “enlightenment” can pertain only to this very moment, and cannot be a permanent personal attainment.
That was the observation of Gotama, the Buddha, who pointed out that the self is not a fixed entity with an essence of its own, but a confection constructed preconceptually from five different elements: a living animal body, feelings, perceptions, thoughts, and awareness of the body, feelings, perceptions, and thoughts.
Many contemporary spiritual teachers like to claim that “myself” is “pure awareness,” but that leaves out the other factors enumerated by Gotama.
Is there really a "myself" entirely separate from feelings, perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and the body?
That "myself"--the one touted by the silly geese gurus-- is another case of splitting, in this case, splitting “awareness” from the objects of awareness. But, as I said in The Ten Thousand Things, “Without awareness, there are no objects, but without objects, there is no awareness. So, it is not that objects arise in or upon awareness . . . but that objects are awareness, and awareness is objects.” [page 28].
I understand why people cling to the belief in so-called pure awareness or “presence” apart from ordinary human primate existence. If the living animal body element in the Buddha’s list of the five skandhas can be split off from “myself,” then the fear of death—the fear of not being at all—disappears. In that fantasy, since all I "really" am is pure awareness, I don't need a body. The body is just my "meat suit." To believe that nonsense has been the goal of “spiritual” people forever: Vahalla, the Elysian Fields, the happy hunting ground, Shangrila, Heaven with Jesus, etcetera ad nauseum.
That is the ultimate splitting: I am not the body; I am a soul. Yes, perhaps, but without a body and a brain, there would be no “you" to believe such a thing. When that is understood, the split is healed. That is what I call sanity.
Be well.
If I have a belief, the last thing I ever want to do is fortify it :-). For amusement, I'm always trying to wreck any beliefs I have. Even if I don't succeed, I take them as only having relative meaning which means none at all.
No. I was asking because if you had another plausible explanation for consciousness I wanted to hear it. After all, consciousness is the whole ballgame really. Remove it and there's nothing left… Unless of course something that's left is conscious. This is true whether you believe that consciousness is generated by the brain, is existence itself, or any other reason. Without it, there is nothing at all.
The only useful place any of these conversations can lead is to understanding, which serves our need for freedom, security, and contentment. In order to lead there, it would have to cause someone to change the way they look at things, and the only reason that would be of any import is if the way they were looking at things shifted from distorted to not distorted.
As for science, I am no expert at all so I may be wrong on this, but when I hear what scientists have discovered on a quantum level it boils down to "the observed" not even existing until it is observed. That said, I am open to the idea that consciousness is a biological phenomenon, I just don't see or hear anything that backs that up in a way that makes sense yet.
When I watched the suffering of my mother, a woman born into a weird world of Vaudevillian parents, Irish mother, Ukrainian Jewish father, both disowned & then divorced, I saw a woman who was, at the same time, abused, abandoned, powerful, brave, soulful and fragmented.
I get it now—the fragmented psyche. No resources, very little help. Fun, smart, a singer, but painfully fragmented. Is this description something like the splitting you describe?