Separate Self Syndrome (SSS)

Non-Duality Press

January 8 at 5:56am · 

Our self neither needs nor wants anything from the body or mind, let alone from the world or anyone else, nor does it fear their eventual destiny—their disappearance or death—for it knows that its destiny is not theirs.

This inherent freedom from the fear of death or disappearance is the first thing to be veiled when our being is taken over by the belief and feeling of separation. In fact, it could be said that all the apparent activities of the separate, inside self are simply aimed at alleviating this fear of death.

The longing for happiness and the fear of death are, in fact, two aspects of the same syndrome. The syndrome is the imaginary inside self. Future generations may one day diagnose SSS—Separate Self Syndrome—from which the vast majority of humanity suffers and which is the main cause of most psychological unhappiness.

Hence the apparently separate inside self is always on a mission, seeking to secure happiness in the objects and relationships of the world that it conceives to be outside itself and desperately trying to alleviate the fear of death which haunts it. Between these two fires the separate self burns.

~ Rupert Spira

Image: Ryan Forster