Selfishness is not a bad thing. For every action of ours has a selfish motive behind it. One can not survive without selfishness. Selfishness is the nature of existence.
When you befriend a rich person for financial help there is an apparent selfish motive. When you approach an attractive woman in the bar there is a selfish motive. When you spend time with your close friend there is a selfish motive. Even when you love someone and sacrifice something for him/her there is a selfish motive! How, you might wonder. The sacrifice makes "you" feel good. So, even that sacrifice is directed by a selfish motive!
However, while selfishness is always there, it is to be understood that as you go up the ladder of spiritual development you experience more and more refined forms of selfishness. We can also call them stages or levels of selfishness. You can only attain these more and more sophisticated levels of selfishness, but at no point you are free of it. The very desire to perpetuate your existence involves "self", and is a selfish motive. Thus, survival itself is selfishness.
Now let's understand different levels of selfishness in the order of low to high —
What are the levels of selfishness?
1. Material self. When you engage with other people to secure material gains for yourself, you are operating at this lowest level of selfishness. Examples include befriending a rich person for financial gain, or doing favors for your boss to get a promotion, or celebrating birthday to receive gifts etc. This level of selfishness is least conducive to spiritual fulfillment in life.
I have called it "material self" because here your "self" is pampered by, or dwells on, material acquisitions. Subsequent terms are also to be understood in the similar way.
2. Physical self. When you engage with people for fulfillment of your physical needs you are at this, a little higher, level of selfishness. Examples include sexual pleasure, physical comfort and security, and other bodily appetites. This level of selfishness is higher than the previous one for it's more natural. Compared to the needs of material nature, which are worldly, physical needs are natural and are more or less universally present.
3. Mind self. Here you engage with someone or do something for wellbeing of your mind. For example, you be with a close friend who understands you very much. You share the same wavelength. Then it's a great comfort for the mind just to be with that person. Another example can be an act of helping someone. By helping those in need you feel good inside. It's adding to your mind's wellbeing. So, this is yet higher level of selfishness.
4. Spiritual or consciousness self. When you transcend even "mind self" you enter the last level which is the sublimest form of selfishness possible called "consciousness self". Then your "self" exists only as consciousness. Consciousness of being alive. You want to be alive, of course. And when you are keeping alive it has to be at expense of something. For you will at least depend on plants, or animals for the food. However, this is the most refined form of selfishness.
If you observe, the first three stages share this common thing of "needing (or using) other people". But in the last stage, i.e. "consciousness self", this characteristic is eliminated. At this height of spiritual development you won't require other people for your fulfillment, not even for your mind's wellbeing. That does not mean you will not engage with people. You may do everything with people, but at the same time nothing of it would matter as far as fulfillment in the depth of your being is concerned.
Also, in the first three levels of selfishness most of the time people carry all three types of selfishness and dwell in each one in different circumstances to maintain their fulfillment. But the last level, consciousness self, is radical transcendence. Once you have reached that level you are already in fulfillment, and hence, won't require other types of selfishness.
The last, and the most refined, level of selfishness is where a spiritually developed person should find himself.
When you befriend a rich person for financial help there is an apparent selfish motive. When you approach an attractive woman in the bar there is a selfish motive. When you spend time with your close friend there is a selfish motive. Even when you love someone and sacrifice something for him/her there is a selfish motive! How, you might wonder. The sacrifice makes "you" feel good. So, even that sacrifice is directed by a selfish motive!
However, while selfishness is always there, it is to be understood that as you go up the ladder of spiritual development you experience more and more refined forms of selfishness. We can also call them stages or levels of selfishness. You can only attain these more and more sophisticated levels of selfishness, but at no point you are free of it. The very desire to perpetuate your existence involves "self", and is a selfish motive. Thus, survival itself is selfishness.
Now let's understand different levels of selfishness in the order of low to high —
What are the levels of selfishness?
1. Material self. When you engage with other people to secure material gains for yourself, you are operating at this lowest level of selfishness. Examples include befriending a rich person for financial gain, or doing favors for your boss to get a promotion, or celebrating birthday to receive gifts etc. This level of selfishness is least conducive to spiritual fulfillment in life.
I have called it "material self" because here your "self" is pampered by, or dwells on, material acquisitions. Subsequent terms are also to be understood in the similar way.
2. Physical self. When you engage with people for fulfillment of your physical needs you are at this, a little higher, level of selfishness. Examples include sexual pleasure, physical comfort and security, and other bodily appetites. This level of selfishness is higher than the previous one for it's more natural. Compared to the needs of material nature, which are worldly, physical needs are natural and are more or less universally present.
3. Mind self. Here you engage with someone or do something for wellbeing of your mind. For example, you be with a close friend who understands you very much. You share the same wavelength. Then it's a great comfort for the mind just to be with that person. Another example can be an act of helping someone. By helping those in need you feel good inside. It's adding to your mind's wellbeing. So, this is yet higher level of selfishness.
4. Spiritual or consciousness self. When you transcend even "mind self" you enter the last level which is the sublimest form of selfishness possible called "consciousness self". Then your "self" exists only as consciousness. Consciousness of being alive. You want to be alive, of course. And when you are keeping alive it has to be at expense of something. For you will at least depend on plants, or animals for the food. However, this is the most refined form of selfishness.
If you observe, the first three stages share this common thing of "needing (or using) other people". But in the last stage, i.e. "consciousness self", this characteristic is eliminated. At this height of spiritual development you won't require other people for your fulfillment, not even for your mind's wellbeing. That does not mean you will not engage with people. You may do everything with people, but at the same time nothing of it would matter as far as fulfillment in the depth of your being is concerned.
Also, in the first three levels of selfishness most of the time people carry all three types of selfishness and dwell in each one in different circumstances to maintain their fulfillment. But the last level, consciousness self, is radical transcendence. Once you have reached that level you are already in fulfillment, and hence, won't require other types of selfishness.
The last, and the most refined, level of selfishness is where a spiritually developed person should find himself.
Hi Darshan,
ReplyDeleteThis was a great post. You made the levels of selfishness very clear, and I couldn't agree more. I think we are all striving for "radical transcendence" (whether we know it or not) and actually understanding this, rather than thinking of it as the impossible concept of selflessness, is very helpful in moving closer to it.
Thanks again,
Kitty
apparently its impossible to attain selflessness unless one has decided to fast to death..the kind of samadhis that the jains do
ReplyDeleteHelping others can involve pity for others. And that's disrespect. That kind of help is Ugly. And I hate that kind of charity.. whether being on the giving or receiving end.
ReplyDelete