Reference: Postulate Mechanics
Self = Awareness + Identity + Viewpoint
The Big Picture
Buddhism says life is inherently full of suffering and instability. But that is only true from a narrow human perspective. At the scale of the universe, suffering and instability are simply things that have gone out of balance — problems waiting to be solved.
Life itself is the universe’s way of solving problems. Life is not the problem.
Throughout most of life’s history, organisms existed without any sense of self-awareness. The word “I” only appeared with humans, and even then, it is mostly just a useful label. The trouble starts when religions treat this “I” as something permanent and real.
Three Ideas of a Permanent Self
Soul (Abrahamic religions)
Most people in the West are raised to believe they have a soul — a non-physical entity that survives death and faces judgment in heaven or hell. The soul is thought to be separate from the body and to last forever.
Thetan (Scientology)
Scientology teaches something similar: you are an eternal spiritual being called a thetan. The slight difference is that you don’t have a thetan — you are one. You are the being who lives inside and operates the body.
Atman (Eastern religions)
In Hindu thought, Atman is pure consciousness that takes on individuality by getting caught up in the physical world. It moves from body to body across lifetimes. Eventually, through awareness, it recognizes the entanglement and becomes free, returning to pure consciousness.
A common mistake here: people assume that because consciousness exists, it must be permanent. But consciousness is always changing. Permanence is an illusion projected onto it.
The Core Mistake
All three concepts above share a common assumption: that somewhere at the center of your experience, there is a fixed, permanent “I.”
That assumption is the mistake.
How to Undo It
Eastern traditions offer a direct method called Neti, neti — Sanskrit for “not this, not that.” You systematically ask of everything you identify with: Is this really me?
The process goes like this: pick anything — a physical object, a thought, an emotion, a belief — and ask yourself:
- “Am I this _____?”
- “What even is this _____?”
- “Do I truly understand what this _____ is?”
You can only honestly say “I am not this” after you genuinely understand what it is. You peel away layer by layer — body, energy, thoughts, assumptions — until you reach the bare underlying assumption (the postulate) at the root of it, and ask again: Is this me?
What Postulate Mechanics Says
The observer and the observed are neither completely separate nor the same. There is a living relationship — a harmony — between them.
Recognizing that harmony is the realization.
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