Un-selfing

 

I recently read an essay by Maria Popova over at her blog The Marginalian about the concept of un-selfing. The term ‘unselfing’ was coined by the novelist/philosopher Iris Murdoch in her book The Sovereignty of the Good where she defines it as a certain psychological state occasioned by moments of beauty in nature and art.^[1]

 

I am looking out of my window in an anxious and resentful state of mind, oblivious of my surroundings, brooding perhaps on some damage done to my prestige. Then suddenly I observe a hovering kestrel. In a moment everything is altered. The brooding self with its hurt vanity has disappeared. There is nothing now but kestrel. And when I return to thinking of the other matter it seems less important. And of course this is something which we may also do deliberately: give attention to nature in order to clear our minds of selfish care^[2].

I think what Murdoch is talking about here is part of a more general phenomenon. Losing oneself in the beauty of nature or great art is only one specific form of un-selfing, which we might call aesthetic un-selfing. But there are others. For me, the word ‘un-selfing’ sparkles with connotations suggesting ideas in psychology and religion about things like “ego-dissolution”, “self-transcendence” and “at-oneness”. The common thread here is the idea of relaxing or dissolving one’s identity, opening one up to a greater, more fundamental reality.

If we think about un-selfing in this broader way, we could talk about many different kinds of un-selfing such as religious un-selfing or psychedelic un-selfing (where drugs like LSD or DMT are used). In religion, un-selfing seems to be of particular importance and it comes in many shades, from simple reverence at the beauty of God’s creation to moments of full-blown mystical ecstasy.

Take the medieval mystic Meister Eckhart, a fourteenth century Dominican from Germany. He argued that God resided in every person’s soul. By delving inwards, each person could merge their own being with that of God’s. A truly divine person, he says, “… is so fully suffused with the noble essence of the soul, which she has received from God and the divine light …”^[3]. Thus the true disciple is able to merge with God in moments of pure bliss.

… When the soul receives a kiss from the Godhead, then she stands in absolute perfection and bliss: then she is embraced by unity. In the first touch with which God touched the soul and continues to touch her as uncreated and uncreatable, there, through God’s touch, the soul is as noble as God Himself is. God touches the soul like Himself.^[4]

Similar expressions can be found in the Buddhist tradition regarding the idea of Nibbāna. On attaining Nibbāna the sage loses all sense of the everyday conditioned world, the world of cause and effect, of limits, of pain and suffering. In the Pali Canon the Buddha says of the enlightened sage or Arahant,

He is detached from all the world,

Unengaged with all the world.

He indeed is the all-vanquishing sage,

The one released from all the knots,

Who has reached the supreme state of peace,

Nibbāna, without fear from any side.^[5]

 

Not all are able to achieve absolute Nibbana but many Buddhists are taught they can catch glimpses of it in deeper states of meditation called Jhanas of which there are said to be four. The prominent Buddhist monk, Ajahn Brahm says that bliss is the dominant feature of the first jhāna which is also associated with feelings of “sheer immensity, egolessness, stillness, ecstasy, ultimateness, and pure otherworldliness” which he says other traditions like Christianity mis-describe as “union with God.”^[6]

However described, cases of religious un-selfing like those described above are important to many traditions, from Islamic Sufis to South American shamans, from devotees of tantric yoga to God-soaked medieval Christian mystics and 18th Century Shakers. Why have these ecstatic, trance-like states, these extreme forms of un-selfing been central to so many religions?

Evolutionary biologists, anthropologists and historians mostly agree that humanity’s first recognizable form of religion was shamanism. Shamanism probably built on an even older, but more diffuse background of folk beliefs about things like nature spirits (animism), life after death, magic and witchcraft. But shamanism’s main feature is  a form of un-selfing achieved through things like trance-dance, psychedelics, hypnotic drumming and fasting. Through such practices the shaman and/or their patients feel they transcend the everyday world merging with divine realms and entities for the purposes of healing, for divination or to seek insight and wisdom.

The eminent evolutionary biologist Robin Dunbar argues that all later religions built on what he calls the “shamanic stance”, albeit interpreting and tweaking it in different ways. Dunbar argues that social cohesion was the main driver of shamanism and religiosity in general. In his book How Religion Evolved, he summarizes a large amount of recent experimental data showing that the collective, synchronized behaviors often used to induce shamanic trance in the form of dance, ritual, drumming, repetitive chanting, etc., are proven to boost endorphins in the brain. Such endorphin-hits promote geniality, improve performance at co-operative tasks, help to temper anger and conflict, lower stress, increase pain thresholds, stimulate the immune system and promote a general sense of well-being.

In small bands where people lived together twenty four seven, things like jealousy, romantic feuds and arguments over food distribution could quickly unravel the whole community. Constant effort had to be put into preventing and healing divisions. Whereas our primate relatives like chimps and baboons groom each other’s fur to build alliances and cement their communities, humans developed collective activities like dance. Dunbar even calls such forms of behavior “extended grooming”. Dunbar gives the example of the San Bushmen of South Africa, saying that “whenever relationships within the community or camp start to become overly fractious, someone calls for a trance dance. Trance seems to reboot the system, restoring relationships among the members of the community back to their pristine state”^[7].

Dunbar cites one fascinating fact in support of the idea that we have a hardwired predisposition for synchronized activities like collective singing. He says that the average difference between the vocal ranges of males and females in humans is exactly one octave. Evolution has lowered men’s vocal range far more than should be expected from body size alone, suggesting that it has selected for men and women to sing at different, but musically harmonious pitches, as happens for example in a mixed choir. In Dunbar’s words the harmonious combination of male and female voices in their different registers, ‘triggers a sense of thrill’^[8].

A closely related but different phenomenon to un-selfing is known by psychologists as identity fusion. Whereas un-selfing is about opening up to a deeper reality, identity fusion is about an individual merging their identity with that of a group.

Both un-selfing and identity fusion seem to have been central to the evolution of religion.

In his book Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World, anthropologist  Harvey Whitehouse describes identity fusion as a kind of “social glue”. Evolutionarily speaking, identity fusion would have helped our tribal ancestors to forge a single tribal identity that minimized selfish behavior in times of collective danger (e.g. running away during conflicts, or hoarding food in times of scarcity) whilst inspiring acts of bravery in defense of the tribe and violence against those who threatened it.

Although identity fusion is especially strong between people who share traumatic experiences (e.g. during war), lesser forms of identity fusion can be replicated by rituals designed to have an intense and lasting emotional impact. Thus many initiation ceremonies in tribal societies are frightening, grueling or even painful, but they tend to bond the participants for life. Initiates will often reflect back on the powerful religious symbolism surrounding the event which becomes essential to the formation of their tribal identities as adults. Whitehouse describes the initiation ceremony for young men of the Baining people of Papua New Guinea which requires them to insert sharpened bones into their skin and cut their tongue multiple times (79). He also gives an example from the Adamawa region of Cameroon, where little boys are herded into a darkened enclosure and terrorized by masked men posing as spirits, “the psychological impact of which” Whitehouse says “is permanent”^[9].

But identity fusion needn’t take such extreme forms. Less painful but frequent rituals are used to bind parishioners, believers and followers whether in a church, a Buddhist monastery or a mosque. Repetitive readings of the Koran, the Bible, the Tora or the Buddhist Sutras, and other collective activities like group chanting and regular ceremonies such as the Eucharist in a Catholic mass, serve the purpose of binding believers together, making them more pliable and willing to make personal sacrifices. Similar rituals are employed by all kinds of organizations to build solidarity, from nation states and criminal gangs to corporations and religious cults.

Identity fusion and un-selfing were probably both involved in the emergence of religion amongst our ancestors but they are very different. Un-selfing loosens our sense of identity altogether.  Fusion on the other hand reinforces personal identity by expanding it to encompass a whole group.

Identity fusion seems to be behind much of the world’s woes from religious fanaticism, to racism and nationalistic violence. One need only think about how cults fuse believers’ identities though intense and prolonged ritual practices whether it is seemingly innocent things like yoga^[10] or more perturbing ones like self-flagellation, to condition their members into committing the most abominable acts whether on themselves or others.

Un-selfing however seems much more tied to feelings of universal love. Spiritual Naturalism should thus be more inclined to forms of un-selfing than identity fusion. Unfortunately, the propensity for identity fusion is also rooted in our biology and thus always a risk we need to be mindful of.

It is also important to recognize there is a spectrum of un-selfing practices. At one end are mild practices which merely relax the boundaries of the self, like moments of poetic reverie or awe at the beauty of nature. At the other end of the spectrum are experiences of complete ego-dissolution like those experienced during New Age ayahuasca ceremonies. Ultimately however we should remember that un-selfing, in all its forms, is not about communing with the supernatural but a way of taming self-centered, ego-driven forces in the human psyche, forces that can tear society apart if not kept in check. Or as Iris Murdoch put it in the passage quoted at the beginning of this essay, un-selfing is a way “to clear our minds of selfish care”.

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Bio: Dwayne Schulz lives in Queensland, Australia. He is a retired lawyer who has worked in the field of Aboriginal land rights. He completed a thesis in 2016 on the thought of Alfred North Whitehead for a Master of Arts in Philosophy at Monash University. His interests include philosophies of life, civilization, indigeneity and environmentalism.

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References

Bodhi, B. In the Buddha’s Words: An Anthology of Discourses from the Pali Canon. Wisdom Publications, 2005.

Brahm, A. Mindfulness, Bliss and Beyond: A Meditator’s Handbook. Wisdom Publications, 2005.

Dunbar, R. How Religion Evolved. Pelican Books, 2023.

Murdoch, I. The Sovereignty of the Good. Routledge, 1971.

Walshe, M. (ed) The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart.  Crossroad Publishing Company. 2009.

Whitehouse, H. Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World. Penguin Books, 2024.

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Image Attribution

The above picture is a representation of rock art of the Khoikhoi and San people of southern Africa, showing a trance dance performed with the whole community. From Lewis-Williams, David and Thomas Dowson. Images of Power: Understanding Bushman Rock Art. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1989. Art. Johannesburg: Southern Book Publishers, 1989 from “Rock Art, Khoisan,” in World History Commons, https://worldhistorycommons.org/rock-art-khoisan [accessed June 9, 2026]

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^[1] Apparently Nietzsche also used the term in his book Ecce Homo but in a negative sense associated with forms of self-denial, self-denigration and asceticism in Christianity.

^[2] Murdoch,I.  p.82.

^[3] Eckhart, M. p.216.

^[4] Ibid., p.338.

^[5] Bodhi, B., p.420.

^[6] Brahm, A., p.157.

^[7] Dunbar, R.,p.70.

^[8] Ibid., p.147.

^[9] Whitehouse, H., p.81.

^[10] See for example the documentary Twisted Yoga about an international yoga cult that indoctrinates young followers, especially women, through such means, but ultimately for the purpose of satisfying their guru, a man called Gregorian Bivolaru now facing sex trafficking and rape charges in France.