' Jackson Peterson: The Neuro-Science of “self” '...

We know certain chemicals like LSD 25, can disrupt the appearance of the sense of self in many individuals. This points to a neurological basis for the sense of “me” and “I am”.

The full article is linked below these excerpts;

The author wrote:

“This event started with a panic attack that ended, unexpectedly, with the cessation of the inner self-voice and, with it, what is experienced as thinking. I suddenly found myself in a state where I was still aware of myself, but without the usual sense of body, self, or past life. Although this only lasted for a short time, its impact was profound and irreversible. What used to be a continuous flow of self-consciousness has been since then continuously disrupted.”

This is exactly what has occurred here several times and twice after a very minor “panic attack” sensation. It abruptly ended when the mind recognized that it was projecting the “me” self who was feeling the panic. One then knows that no actual self of any kind exists due to its complete absence. This is “passing through the gate” of “no self” or Anatta. Without this “anatta” event occurring, none of these “no self” teachings makes any sense, because the imaginary “self” is always present.

Further the author writes:

“The second self-experience - mainly addressed in Eastern traditions (particularly Hinduism) and recently in New-Age spirituality (see for ex., Wilber, 1998; Tolle, 2005) – is that of a “seer” or “watcher”. This experience (which, as will be described later, is driven by the mirroring of the self-face) becomes more prominent when the thinking self gets disrupted, an experience referred to in spirituality as “No-Mind” and pursued through special meditation techniques.

The spiritual literature on this self-experience is quite extensive. However, for the purpose of this paper, the discussion will only focus on the mirroring process underlying it. But it may be worth mentioning here that the so-called “seer”/”watcher” has been traditionally conceived of as being a Formless Self, which, as will be seen, is not the case. For lack of a specific term, the remainder of the paper will refer to this self-experience as Self-Awareness while the other self-experience (i.e. the thinking self) will be referred to with the term Self-Consciousness (as used in the above study by Gallagher & Zahavi).”