To begin with, there is no YOU. And if you hear this from your already enlightened understanding of it, that statement would be a no big deal at all. You just know that it is true even apparently in contradiction to what has been said in your lifetime that there is you; action thus there must be actor; verb thus there must be a subject.
However, for a man who is still tied up with the idea of doership, the ‘there is no you’ idea is utterly ridiculous - a seemingly huge dose of illogical shock that a mind has no way to absorb. But there will be always a point in time that an understanding will be revealed: that there is just “happening” happening by itself and there is no one forcing it to be done.
So, for the sake of talking let us come to deconstruct why there is a natural refusal to accept the idea that there is no one doing anything. And perhaps there is a big hope to pinpoint the source from where the natural repulsion comes from.
The culprit can be traced from the conditioning which started from childhood. Parents assigned a name for you and you thought your name is you. Dynamically, you and your society forged a personality of you. This personality is the fixed blueprint by which you and the society negotiate with each other. And it is no surprise that the dealing is so far so good thus strengthening even more the idea that your established personality is all that there is. You have no slight suspicion that something is wrong. You are an individual. You project to be so and you are in a comfortable assumption that your society acknowledges it to be so. Until someone pointed you out that your well-held identity is a phony one. And you just can’t swallow it.
Obviously, the idea that there is nobody doing anything is the last thing most people would consider. Why? Fear or perhaps the absurd thought of it. For aside from being an extremely unconventional idea, it also threats the very sense a man has of himself; his self-established identity, his name, his personality, his I-ness from that of the others, or his ego. What crime could be a greater than turning against own self? So no, there is no hope that a man would readily surrender to the idea that there is no actor of the action; no doer of the doing; or no initiator of the happening. The idea that there is no one doing everything is an offense against the seemingly solid, compact, unshakable sense of being an individual. . In short, it is against the root of one’s pride, the ego, the me, the I, the myself etc. And every man is apparently strongly clinging to this sense of individuality.
Being an individual gives the thought of being in control. The idea that there is no one doing everything is dreadful. It brings annihilation to anyone’s identity. An individual clings to his identify much like clinging for his life. Losing identity means death. So everyone is afraid to lose control. Having the grip to the feeling of control is what makes-up every man, he thinks so. Identity is resolved unto itself: to take hold of the control. It is a must to stay in control. Or else….
But first, what is thing we call control? Why almost all of us are consumed by the idea that we ought to have at least a control over anything foremost of it is the control of ourselves?
We are afraid of disorder that is why we think we need to have a control. The feeling that we have control makes us whole. This gives us reassurance that our existence is solid and not a product of some random whims of nature. We basically don’t like the idea that we are bunch of nothing. We are always something. We are conscious matter. And so as to negate the idea that we are nobody, we are in constant battle to affirm our control.
However, the degree by which we believe we have control is also the degree by which we are consumed in an illusion that we have control over anything. If you come to a situation wherein a chocolate candy is in your mouth and you decide to either chew or melt it, you may say that you have a control on the fate of the chocolate candy in your mouth. But the question is, how do you often caught your self deciding whether to chew or melt the chocolate candy in your mouth before consuming it? What about for all other kinds of foods, or for all other kinds of actions? Do you always take time deciding first how you are going to do what? I bet you don’t and you can’t. But isn’t true that things are always accomplished as they should be, with or without your conscious effort for it to be done? Things happen not with your permission but there is a whole lot bigger indeterminable conspiracy than what you limitedly think you do which makes things go as they are. Everything just happens by itself.
In analysis, the idea that you have control is a phony feeling amidst the vastness of everything-ness happening around. And perhaps control is nothing but just a contracted state brought upon by yet another idea that you are an individual. You think you are an independent entity capable of autonomous decision thus this feeling of control over things that you feel you have autonomy with.
What is true is that the fear of losing control is very much tied up with the fear losing the identity you have. You are not actually in fear of losing control. At the root of it is your fear of losing yourself. You think you will be dissolved, and the mere thought of it is a repulsive one. You simply don’t like it. You strongly believe you are an individual and you ought to be kept that way.
Which brings us to the deeper quest of finding out who we really are. Who is this something in us that is afraid of losing the control? Who is this within us that is afraid of losing itself? Who are we? Who am I? What am I? Thus, you now have your own legendary journey of finding who you are. Who am I? Yet…..but who is asking?
