Saturday, January 6, 2018

The Church of Jim Carrey's No-Self

In Greta Gerwig's terrific new film, Lady Bird, there is a scene near the end of the film where the protagonist, Christine, asks a new college classmate, “Do you believe in God?” When he responds glibly with a resounding no, she chides him for his shallow thinking with a clever, yet nuanced retort: “People go by the names their parents give them, but they don't believe in God.”

And then there's Jim Carrey these days, who would probably say a name is nothing but a label that is not associated with anything, because the self and objective reality is just an illusion. Recently, there was a lot of social media chatter with an interview he gave at a fashion show (seen below). Much of the reaction revolved around how deranged and incoherent he came across. But truthfully, Carrey isn't so much crazy as he is just delluded by a common mantra in certain spiritual circles these days. 


Seeing the illusion of self-world gets its roots in neo-advaita teachings. In the Vedic teachings, specifically from the mystic/philosopher Shankara, there is no recognition of reality between the Absolute and the relative. Hence, the individual is also an illusion if seen through the veil of ignorance. Spiritual practices would aim towards extinguishing the personality since there was no mediator between God and world. All was not-two. 

Carrey, a student of Eckhart Tolle in past years, drank the radical non-dual kool-aid. Moreover, some of his acting experiences allowed him to get so absorbed in character, he would later get disoriented to who his real self really was. 

And yet, in the end, as one mystic said, it seems there is “no cure for personality.” The metaphysical genius Robert Bolton is known for writing about these needed correctives in Shankaran philosophy. He states, “In reality, individuality can have spiritual potentialities just as much as the profane ones it is usually associated with, while conversely there is nothing to prevent anti-individualistic systems from serving profane delusions as well as wisdom, as modern history shows.”

While it is true: “it can be shown that the perceived world is in many ways not the same as the known world.” It is also true: “If the ultimate reality is pure unity, there must be a mind to know it to be so, and that means something more than the pure unity. At the same time yet other minds can know the mind that knows the Unity, as though reality had a self-multiplying infinite regress in it. This is closely attached to the fact that all mystical states, monistic or dualistic, include the continuation of the subordinate faculties in the same personal life. The dualistic conception makes this easier to understand than does the monistic one, and the principles on which it is based account for the existence and truth of Theistic religion as distinct from Pantheistic.

Again, the point here is not to confuse ontology with experience. Mystical realization is never the same as metaphysical or moral insight. While I agree some mystics have the "experience" of no-self, most have not been very adept at integrating this as a lived philosophy. In the case of Carrey, I would gather his experience is mostly a combination of spiritual by-passing and espousing the Shakaran view that he was indoctrinated to. 

Ross Douthat makes an interesting point (while quoting Leszek Kolakowski) about how “The Christian churches imposed strict limits on their mystics... they were expected to maintain "the ontological distinction between God and the soul" and to refrain from suggesting that "the mystical union involves a total annihilation of personality." They were forbidden to use their experiences "as a pretext for disregarding the traditional rules of obedience, let alone the common moral duties." And their claims to divine favor were tested against their conduct: "A mystic's experience, if genuine, strengthens his common virtues of humility, charity, chastity; it proves to be a diabolic temptation, rather than God's gift, if it breeds hubris, indifference to others, or irregularities of conduct."”

Bolton says, “The idealism that makes the most sense is that everything on every level is a manifestation of Consciousness Itself. This viewpoint allows for a material reality that actually exists, but is a stepped-down modification of an all-subsuming universal Mind, a.k.a. God.” As such, and “Unlike the Oriental traditions, a Christian gnosis requires both ‘poles’ of consciousness, because belief in the Incarnation does not allow that the manifest personality is only a ladder to be kicked away when some unspecified entity has identified with the Nous or Atman.” It would be all to easy if “our representation of objective reality could be simplified away if we had the right to say that this just meant that everything was an illusion.”

When Chesterton said “Love desires personality; therefore love desires division,” he was pointing to the telos of the cosmos. We are not put here to extinguish objective reality, but to become sanctified through our love for it. 

Besides, if I ever asked Mr. Carrey for some of his financial holdings, I doubt he would freely say there is nobody who has this money to keep for himself.