The Aggregate Self: Guruji on the Individual Self

From the teachings of Sri Amritananda Natha Saraswati (Guruji). A discourse given in May 2006 at Devipuram. Post title: "The Aggregate Self and the Living Architecture of Intelligence", posted by Vira Chandra on 5 November 2016. The original also has a photo of Guruji, which is not copied here. Originally published at amritananda-natha-saraswati.blogspot.com.

Guruji's words

A discourse by Guruji Sri Amritananda Natha
May 2006, at Devipuram

That’s where selflessness comes into the picture. In order to lose yourself and merge into your environment, you’ve got to understand the impulses that drive that environment. That is what all of our laws and constitutions and so on are trying to do – to abstract the principles that govern a society and define a life system or value system that extends beyond the personal.

So I’ve got my life, and my family has its own “family life.” And every village and town likewise has a life of its own. Every nation has a life. The international regime has a life. And each of these lives contains separate lives within it. Each constitutes a sub-life of all these units. So there’s nothing wrong in assuming that a nation or even a corporation has a life. A corporation is a living entity bound by certain rules and regulations which govern the flow of information in and around it. These flows are like the nervous currents that flow in our own bodies.

You see, a human being is not a single entity. It’s a conglomerate. Every second there are about 1.2 million cells coming into your blood stream and another 1.2 million cells dying. It’s a stream of life, which we simply consider – for convenience – to be a single person, a single entity. But this person does not die with each blood cell that dies and is not reborn with every new cell. So many lives are flowing through us. With such a complicated system in place, it really can’t be said that such-and-such a person is always there – because he or she is becoming a different person with every second, every millisecond, and every nanosecond.

Each day you can put your feet in the river; but it’s not the same river. It’s a different river – different water, different fish, different silt and debris, different microbes with every passing moment – but you still call it by the same name. Likewise with the human entity: I call myself Sastry; but I’m not the same Sastry I was even one second ago.

So these names are confusing. The concept of the “individual self” is actually the concept of an aggregate. And once you accept that an aggregate can have a life – independent of any understanding that a family has a life, a company has a life, a village has a life, a city has a life, Earth has a life, every planet has a life, the solar system has a life, Space has life. All of these are aggregate concepts; they simply represent different levels of the organization of intelligence.

"The Aggregate Self and the Living Architecture of Intelligence", as posted on Guruji's blog on 5 November 2016. The text is kept as in the original.

What this means in practice

In inner worship, this teaching loosens the idea of a fixed "me". When you sit for meditation, you can watch the body as a moving stream of breath, blood and thought instead of a solid thing.

Kaula practice honours the five elements in nature. Guruji's river is a good picture of that: the water element keeps flowing, and the name we give it is only a label.

In external worship such as yantra puja or homam, the deities in the circles can be seen the same way, as lives held inside a larger life. Guruji ends by calling these different levels of the organization of intelligence.

Common questions

What does Guruji mean by the aggregate self?

He means the "individual self" is not one fixed thing. It is a stream of many lives and cells that we call one person for convenience.

Is the self the same from moment to moment?

Guruji says no. He says you become a different person with every second, the way a river has different water each moment while it keeps the same name.

How many blood cells are replaced every second?

In this talk Guruji says about 1.2 million cells come into the blood stream and about 1.2 million die every second.

Can a family or a company have a life?

Yes, in Guruji's view. He says a family, village, nation or corporation has a life of its own, with rules that govern the flow of information like nerve currents in the body.

What does this have to do with selflessness?

Guruji says that to lose yourself and merge into your surroundings, you have to understand the impulses that drive them. Laws and constitutions try to do this for a whole society.