I have just been sent a book from England that might interest you. It is Lord Balfour’s A Study of the Psychological Aspects of Mrs Willett’s Mediumship, and of the Statement of the Communicators Concerning Process. I do not think that you have any doubts about re-birth, but this book seems to me to be quite exceptionally good evidence for it; and the various philosophical problems discussed (between the living and the dead) are themselves of no little interest.
There is, in particular, a disagreement between Balfour (living) and Gurney (dead) about the possibility of there being a split within one and the same person. This disagreement can only be resolved when the distinction between the notion of a person (sakkāya, attā) and that of an individual (puggala) becomes clear. (This distinction, as you will remember, is discussed in the Notes.) Balfour denies that a person, a self, can be split without ipso facto becoming two persons, two selves (i.e. two quite different people): Gurney affirms it. Balfour is wrong for the right reason: Gurney is right for the wrong reason.*
* Balfour; Gurney: On page 269 of the book the Ven. Nanavira noted, in the margin: All the muddle of this chapter comes of the puthujjana’s failure to distinguish personality from individuality. Personality as ‘self’ is indivisible. Individuality is as divisible as you please; that is, within the individual. The word individual does not exclude internal divisions; it simply means that you cannot treat these internal divisions as a collection of individuals. ‘Individual’ is opposed to ‘class’.) And on page 308 there is the marginal note: From a puthujjana’s point of view, Balfour’s objections are valid—‘self’ cannot be divided into separate ‘selves’…. This paradox cannot be resolved in the sphere of the puthujjana. If Gurney is right, that is only because he has, in fact, failed to appreciate Balfour’s dilemma….
***
"You say," the doctor remarked unrelentingly, "that Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, Mary, and the others couldn't be the same person. But they can be. Vicky, don't you see that they could be different aspects of the same person?"
"No, Dr. Wilbur," Vicky said thoughtfully, shaking her head. "I don't see. You, you're just you. You're Dr. Wilbur and no one else."
"Yes?" the doctor asked.
"And I'm just Vicky. There's nobody else here. See." Vicky rose from the couch, paced the room, and asked, "Now do you believe me?"
Vicky sat down again, smiled at the doctor, and remarked, "That settles the question. There's no one else here. You're just Dr. Wilbur, and I'm just Vicky."
"Vicky," the doctor replied, "we haven't settled anything. Let's be honest with each other."
"But, Dr. Wilbur," Vicky insisted, "we most certainly have. We've settled the large, philosophical question of who am I? I am I. You are you. I think; therefore I am. There's a Latin phrase for it: cogito ergo sum. Yes, that's it."
"We've settled nothing," the doctor reminded Vicky. "We haven't established the relationship among Sybil, Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, Mary and the others. What ...?"
"Questions, questions, questions," Vicky interrupted.
"I'd like to ask a question, too. Why do you have to ask all these questions?"
After rejecting the logical conclusion toward which Dr. Wilbur had been trying to lead her, Vicky contradicted the earlier contention that the doctor and she were alone, for she said, "Now, Dr. Wilbur, Mary would like to meet you. She wants to participate in our analysis, and I think we should let her."
"Our analysis?" Dr. Wilbur echoed. "How can it be "our" if you girls are not the same person?"
Vicky chuckled. "I suppose," she said with what seemed like deliberate ambiguity, "you might call it group therapy."
"You agreed you were sisters." Vicky was quick. "Family therapy, then, if you insist. Thanks for the correction."
Then, as surely as if she had physically left the room, Vicky was gone. A voice that definitely was not Vicky's remarked politely, "I'm glad to meet you, Dr. Wilbur."
"You're Mary?" the doctor asked. "Mary Lucinda Saunders Dorsett," the voice replied.
It was not the voice of a woman of the world like Vicky, nor of an angry child like Peggy Lou. The accent was unmistakably midwestern, soft, low, and somber.
SYBIL
By
Flora Rheta Schreiber
***
Vicki is one of multiple personalities (sakkāya) in one individual (puggala) know objectively by other individuals as Sybil.
We can see that there is something wrong, there is a mental problem here, since we as puthujjanas used to the idea one individual (puggala) = one personality (sakkāya). So the case of Sybil is diagnosed as multiple personality disorder in puthujjana medicine.
When the treatment is successful and other personalities are dissolved, certain individual (puggala) know as Sybil, who sees herself as a person (sakkāya) is recognised by medicine as more or less healthy.
In Dhamma medicine however an individual with one personality is still an unhealthy state. Certainty of being (bhava) - cogito ergo sum - is delusion and in need of treatment. The true health comes only when we have the case of an individual without any personality. Arahat can be seen as Mr Nobody.
Puthujjana as an individual has more or less precise self-image of "what Iam" which is sakkāyadithi, and most likely will see an arahat as some special (holy, perfect) person, since it is inconceivable for him, that an individual can function quite well without "I am". That's why some "teachers" insist that there is a difference between living arahat and the dead one, and in fact that bhavanirodho, cessation of being happens only after the death of an arahat. Or that arahat still suffers since he is living in the world.
But the notion of external world in which puthujjana lives is as much dependently arisen on ignorance as he himself, or his being. To be sure, it doesn't mean that the material - external - world where he lives is an illusion. It merely means that when an interpretation of an experience in terms of self and the world is removed and consciousness functions without ignorance - (the subject) - related to self idea of external world is not present for the good reason that there is nothing external in relation to consciousness, all experience is in the field of consciousness.
**
NM : To destroy the false, you must question your most inveterate beliefs. Of these the idea that you are the body is the worst. With the body comes the world, with the world — God, who is supposed to have created the world and thus it starts — fears, religions, prayers, sacrifices, all sorts of systems — all to protect and support the child-man, frightened out of his wits by monsters of his own making. Realise that what you are cannot be born nor die and with the fear* gone all suffering ends.
*The absence of fear in the Dhamma is not the result of some stoic training, so despite of all circumstances one - as a person - is able to remain unmoved and at peace, but the result of seeing things as they are, namely that there are absolutely no reasons for the arising of fear.
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