I’ve got an idea what meditation people might be talking about with doing away with the self. Once you start thinking about what the lower-level mechanics of the brain are like, you start thinking about representations. Instead of the straightforward assertion “there’s a red apple on that table”, you might start thinking “my brain is holding a phenomenal representation of a red apple on a table”. You’ll still assume there’s probably a real apple out there in the world too, though if you’re meditating you might specifically try to not assign meanings to phenomenal experiences even at this level. Now you also have a straightforward assertion “I’m a person who’s awake, aware and feeling experiences”, and you indeed are, but out there, in the physical world, and your awareness is actually the whole substrate of your phenomenal world. But then in your everyday view you also have as part of your world representation the representation of your body, with the sense that thoughts and feelings go on in the representation. And normally you just identify the representation-self with the real physical body and brain out there in the world, like you identify the mind-picture of the red apple with the red apple out there on a table.
But the representation “me, in this body here which I’m aware of” within your sensory landscape isn’t the same thing as your actual physical brain out in the world generating your whole world of awake awareness any more that the impression of an apple in your mind is an actual physical apple. Maybe the idea with the meditation is to become aware of this and realize that consciousness goes on even when you stop paying attention to your representation of yourself and it falls out of your space of perception.
I’ve got an idea what meditation people might be talking about with doing away with the self. Once you start thinking about what the lower-level mechanics of the brain are like, you start thinking about representations. Instead of the straightforward assertion “there’s a red apple on that table”, you might start thinking “my brain is holding a phenomenal representation of a red apple on a table”. You’ll still assume there’s probably a real apple out there in the world too, though if you’re meditating you might specifically try to not assign meanings to phenomenal experiences even at this level. Now you also have a straightforward assertion “I’m a person who’s awake, aware and feeling experiences”, and you indeed are, but out there, in the physical world, and your awareness is actually the whole substrate of your phenomenal world. But then in your everyday view you also have as part of your world representation the representation of your body, with the sense that thoughts and feelings go on in the representation. And normally you just identify the representation-self with the real physical body and brain out there in the world, like you identify the mind-picture of the red apple with the red apple out there on a table.
But the representation “me, in this body here which I’m aware of” within your sensory landscape isn’t the same thing as your actual physical brain out in the world generating your whole world of awake awareness any more that the impression of an apple in your mind is an actual physical apple. Maybe the idea with the meditation is to become aware of this and realize that consciousness goes on even when you stop paying attention to your representation of yourself and it falls out of your space of perception.