I've been toying around with the idea of the self as layers of computer subroutines.

All different meditations end up doing the same thing of interrupting the subroutine's standard data processes and either clearing out the buffer(bare awareness) or routing the data past the 1st level and into the second level (noting). As the 1st subroutine is not used as much it becomes less useful until the overall program deletes it permanently - reboot(blip/nirvana). The consequences of this deletion are the standard attributes of enlightenment. The overall program works better, faster and with less energy wasted. The second subroutine may try to modify itself to fill in the missing 1st routine which is why you need to keep working on deleting the next level.

6 senses data enters selfing routine
...1st level of Self subroutine
......2nd level of Self subroutine
.........3rd level of Self subroutine
.............4th level of Self subroutine
...................................................More subtle levels
.............4th level close loop
.........3rd level close loop
......2nd level close loop
...1st level of Self subroutine
6 senses data now enters next program fully "Selfed"

This is an analogy of course so it will break down eventually but I would like some additional input in fleshing out the concept. What are the different selfing levels doing? do they have a purpose? etc
what do you think?

Howdy DW,
i personally find kenneth folk's 3 way breakdown of selfing helpful. in a talk i heard he mentions 3 subroutines: narrative, emotional and proprioceptive.

Narrative being your personal story including images, memories, titles etc. Proprioceptive being the innate awareness of where your body and its components are in space and in relattion to everything else. Emotional is our programmed reaction to certain stimuli ( i think i got that right).

Each of these components are independent and transparent meaning that none of them preclude the other and each one supports the illusion of self. This is my interpretation upon recollecting his talk.

There is also another interesting and myterious level of all of this and happens at the level of formations. The mytery (to me anyway) of where they come from and how they work. Doctrine says that it is all causal but to break down that code is not a task worth undertaking according to the buddha.

So..good luck!

tom

Tom,
Thanks for the fantastic information. Was just the type of stuff I wanted to look at. Can you find the link by chance?
This changes the analogy....I'll have to contemplate this.

Hey DW,
I'll have to see if I can find the mp3 somewhere as the old KF site is no longer available. When I do I'll post it here but I think the real value is only the poit that his is a 3 subroutine model and yours an fun(n) one and that the specifics of his won't relate one to one with yours. Also , he did not portray those 3 components as a definitive list. So there could be nesting, and subnesting and and and. :-)

cheers

tom

well now I went and done it...going to have to read "I am a strange loop" by Douglas Hofstadter
I've never looked at yogacara before but definitely interesting...Vijnanavada (“Consciousness-affirming”)

I was pretty disappointed by 'I am a Strange Loop'. Parts were interesting, but the second half of the book was more of a ramble on various topics, like what's the implication of someone thinking of a dead person - does that dead person still live on in some way in the living person's consciousness? Slightly interesting topics as a paragraph or two, but not when fleshed out over many many pages.

Godel Escher Bach was great, I've read it twice (had to, to come close to understanding parts of it). Some very interesting chapters comparing consciousness to computer hardware and software. Using your software analogy, all the blue collar processes or subroutines do their thing on a lower level, and when they get to a certain, complex enough state, the process feeds back into itself, forming the strange loop of awareness.

If you haven't, check out 'the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind'.

here

its a talk, and a good one

cheers

tom

Thanks, Tom! That talk was gold!

Update

1...Self entangled with limited reality view..........A&P
2......Self entangled with sensory data...............Sotapanna
3......... Self entangled with Thoughts.................Sakadagami
4............. Self entangled with proprioception......Anāgāmī
5..................Self entangled with ???WTF???…..Arahant
6.......................Self entangled with emotions
7…........................Self entangled with self-referencing identity

1) This selfing process believes that it understands reality based off of historical experience. When reality is experienced as greater than this narrow viewpoint Arising and Passing away happens. Reality is much much more than what has so far been experienced.
2) This selfing process believes that it is the sensory data (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) that is being experienced. When this process is shut down at nibbana, stream entry ( Sotapanna) is achieved.
3) This selfing process believes that it is the thoughts that occur. This creates some of the agency of the self. When this process is shut down at nibbana, Sakadagami is achieved and a large amount of stress disappears.
4) This selfing process believes it is the space that defines the body in the whole of reality. It creates the center point and duality. When this process is shut down at nibbana, Anāgāmī is achieved and the duality of self vs the rest of reality goes away. Non-dualism abides.
5) This selfing process believes????? (I am not at this level and can not speak to it as I have not had any previews of this level.
6) This selfing process is entangled with the emotions that are experienced. Emotional transformation toward positive emotional states.
7) This selfing process causes stress when self-referencing thoughts about identity occur.


I borrowed some from http://www.qmind.org/2012/08/20/the-stages-of-awakening/ which points to Ken's blocked web page.

Hey that's a neat little map---
one thought, what if the direction of transformation at 4th path and beyond shifts at right angles... so the pattern you have verified for yourself up to what you call anagami is not predictive of what happens at '4th path'?? just a little thought; what if the next shift is of a fundamentally different nature than what has preceded (dis-embedding)?

What is the opposite of disembedding, yet also the opposite of embedding at the same time? At a right angle to the axis embedding-disembedding?

Archive.org copy of the KF page.

Update ...thanks Jake for help with 5...

1...Self entangled with limited reality view..........A&P
2......Self entangled with sensory data...............Sotapanna
3......... Self entangled with Thoughts.................Sakadagami
4............. Self entangled with proprioception......Anāgāmī
5..................Self entangled with awareness..…..Arahant
6.......................Self entangled with emotions
7…........................Self entangled with self-referencing identity

1) This selfing process believes that it understands reality based off of historical experience. When reality is experienced as greater than this narrow viewpoint Arising and Passing away happens. Reality is much much more than what has so far been experienced.
2) This selfing process believes that it is the sensory data (sight, sound, smell, touch, taste) that is being experienced. When this process is shut down at nibbana, stream entry ( Sotapanna) is achieved.
3) This selfing process believes that it is the thoughts that occur. This creates some of the agency of the self. When this process is shut down at nibbana, Sakadagami is achieved and a large amount of stress disappears.
4) This selfing process believes it is the space that defines the body in the whole of reality. It creates the center point and duality. When this process is shut down at nibbana, Anāgāmī is achieved and the duality of self vs the rest of reality goes away. Non-dualism abides.
5) This selfing process believes it is awareness. When this process is shut down at nibbana, Arahant is achieved. Since awareness does not reside in any of physicality there seems to be a paradigm shift in the way that reality is perceived accompanied by a tremendous sense of relief and joy and a feeling of completion.
6) This selfing process is entangled with the emotions that are experienced. Emotional transformation toward positive emotional states.
7) This selfing process causes stress when self-referencing thoughts about identity occur.

I borrowed some from http://www.qmind.org/2012/08/20/the-stages-of-awakening/ which points to Ken's blocked web page.
Thanks fivebells for linking to the site and helping me get started with this straw man.
I invite comments on accuracy from everyone since this is somewhat speculative as I have not traversed all of this map.

Update
Here is a graphic representation of reality being experienced at the different stages of self. Reality starts with a dot • and the rest ( ) are the multiple selfing processes. As each layer of selfing is deleted the reality has more room in each moment of experience and grows from ( • ) to ( o ) to (☼) to ☼ to O.

( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )( • )

( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )( o )

(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)(☼)

☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼☼

OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Feedback requested....I'd like to keep working on this if anyone can help out on accuracy...
Thanks,
~D

hey seems like ,your entangled like me in knowing stuff intellectually,i guess it is good to have a good theory at the base,but still nothing is sweet as practicing and realizing the self

I'm finishing reading "I am a strange loop" by Douglas Hofstadter
He describes the selfing process as a feedback loop. Like putting a microphone in front of a speaker, it is the sound happening now that continues to create the sound in each moment. So looking at what meditations do - trying to quiet the self and disembed with the self....it seems like an interesting analogy; the data creating the feedback loop of the self gets turned down until the loop is completely quiet and can stop.

I think op is on the right track somewhat...

The problem is that we are although every thing we experience is always in the present moment, it is always filtered through models of reality.

Our mental models of reality never allow us to be fully present in this moment, because it is always filtered through layers of mental activity. The 'self' is the most notable of these models.

As far as the self-subroutine filteration goes the end point is something like pure sensory preception of AF. At that point the filter of the 'self' is eliminated, and the senses are sense vividly without filter, without a sensor..

However even after the self-model is eliminated there are still other models of reality we hold that obscure the present moment. (even the idea that there is a present moment as differentiated from the past and future is problematic).

But everything we experience is empty (i.e. just a model of reality, not reality itself), and always has been. So that's sort of the paradox of enlightenment. There is no nirvana and no samasara. We are already enlightened.

found another cool book on self...

The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
by Thomas Metzinger

In the chapters that follow, I will lead you through the ongoing Consciousness Revolution. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce basic ideas of consciousness research and the inner landscape of the Ego Tunnel. Chapter 3 examines out-of-body experiences, virtual bodies, and phantom limbs. Chapter 4 deals with ownership, agency, and free will; chapter 5 with dreams and lucid dreaming; chapter 6 with empathy and mirror neurons; and chapter 7 with artificial consciousness and the possibility of postbiotic Ego Machines. All these considerations will help us to further map out the Ego Tunnel. The two final chapters address some of the consequences of these new scientific insights into the nature of the conscious mind-brain: the ethical challenges they pose and the social and cultural changes they may produce (and sooner than we think), given the naturalistic turn in the image of humankind. I close by arguing that ultimately we will need a new “ethics of consciousness.” If we arrive at a comprehensive theory of consciousness, and if we develop ever more sophisticated tools to alter the contents of subjective experience, we will have to think hard about what a good state of consciousness is. We urgently need fresh and convincing answers to questions like the following: Which states of consciousness do we want our children to have? Which states of consciousness do we want to foster, and which do we want to ban on ethical grounds? Which states of consciousness can we inflict upon animals, or upon machines? Obviously, I cannot provide definitive answers to such questions; instead, the concluding chapters are meant to draw attention to the important new discipline of neuroethics while at the same time widening our perspective.

Looks interesting