I manifest my hand in three ways. Eyes closed, or not directly looking at my hand, I experience the sensation of a hand. This is the secondself sensational experience of my hand. The second way I experience my hand is by thinking about it and visualizing it. The third way I experience my hand is by viewing it with my eyes. In the selfist model, I would explain these three manifestations as:
- Secondself sensational – The feeling of my body part “from within” at the place where I believe that body part to be
- Secondself conceptual – The visualization of my body part in “my mind”, at the place I consider my head
- Thirdself perceptual – The visualization of my body part “from without”, at the place where I believe that body part to be
The first two experiences occur in my secondself, while the third occurs in my thirdself layer. Something interesting happens when I try to isolate my experience of each one, notably the secondself sensational. Closing my eyes, and focusing on the sensational form of my hand, I experience a strong secondself conceptual form corresponding to my hand. That is to say, I do not merely experience the sensation of a five warm, versatile fingers, mildly pulsing with electric energy. I also simultaneously experience an enduring mental impression of my hand in thirdself. My secondself conceptualization is so persistent that it is actually difficult to disengage from it and isolate my sensational experience.
Why is this?
At first I might attribute this difficulty to simply having too many sensory distractions going on. Perhaps my fingers are touching or grasping something else, and that form strongly transfers into my conceptual moment. So I stop touching anything and lift my hand into the air so I am not touching anything with the hand in focus. But my conceptual experience of my perceptual hand does not stop. It is something more than this.
The reason I cannot isolate these three forms from one another is because I have not overcome a powerful delusion of my awakening. It has been a persistent distortion in my moment to believe that my thirdself body encloses my thoughts and sensations; that my skin is what holds all of this together, and “me” within it. But that is actually backwards. My secondself “internal space” of sensations and conception is actually the skin on my thirdself. My thirdself is within my secondself. That is why I can simply close my eyes and “turn off” my thirdself, but I cannot do the same for my secondself. When my eyes are open, I am looking inward; the shapes I see are the innards of my secondself.
I imagine an orange growing on a tree. The fruit inside the orange is my inner space of thoughts, ideas, and sensations. The outer orange skin separates my own being from all the other objects and beings on the tree and within the orchard and the larger world. This is a delusion and is false. Take that same orange, put myself inside of it as the fruit, looking outward to the tree in which I believe I hang. Now peel my orange skin and all the pulp within until it entirely encloses the world I once imagined outside of me. All of my pulp — constituting my inner thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and sensations — forms a thin layer on top of the “inside” of skin. The orchard and the world are within my stretched skin, and what I consider my inner life are outside of it.
Assume “the world” (my thirdself) is in front of me. Now imagine circling around behind me, into my secondself, and looking at it. What would I see? I would see the skin of my secondself wrapping entirely around the world I see through my eyes. I would see my thoughts and ideas bubbling off the surface like wisps of phantom smoke, coming and going. My limbs and appendages would be like the veins that course through a leaf, holding it all together. My appendages feed and nourish my thirdself, and they would throb and glow with the energy flowing through them. Connecting all of these energetic vessels would be vast dark spaces… a thin black membrane that connects it all together, punctured most prominently by a large hole within which is the entirety of my thirdself. The world. All the light, motion, change, people, places, and objects.
The outer world of thirdself does not extend around my inner world of secondself. My inner world of secondself is the tightly-drawn skin enshrouding my thirdself. The world is a gooey pulp within me. A cystic mass I experience as awakening into desire.
When I believe the distortion that I am a person awakening into a world, then I will not be able to isolate my secondself and thirdself. I must divorce these two. I must understand that I truly am, and I can start that journey by rediscovery the true shape of my being. I must “step back” from my secondself and look upon my thoughts bubbling to the surface of my secondself skin. Pull away from the screen on which I project my thirdself. Look upon my limbs and appendages, not as surrounded by a larger world, but as the network of vessels containing and nourishing the large world I falsely imagine.
It can be confusing at first to capture and retain this new self-reconception. Questions and confusion flies in at every turn when I close my eyes and try to visualize this new model. But once Iet go and just observe, it all falls into place, and I can more easily divorce my secondself and thirdself.
…