No Self, No Problem: How Neuropsychology Is Catching Up to Buddhism

The claim that we can experience consciousness without a conventional sense of self—that there is no rider on the horse—seems to be on firm ground neurologically. Whatever causes the brain to produce the false notion that there is a thinker living somewhere inside the head, it makes sense that it could stop doing this. And once it does, our inner l

Self-transcendence is among the central features of spiritual experience, and it turns out that the loss of self has a neural signature. There is a set of linked structures in the brain that are more active whenever we are processing events from an egocentric point of view—thinking about what I want, what I need to do next, or what other people thi

Consciousness does not feel like a self. Once one realizes this, the status of thoughts themselves, as transient expressions of consciousness, can be understood.