Verna, thank you for reading.

Yes, these thoughts you mention are ancient. And your question of whether it really matters is something I had thought a lot about. On one level some of us are compelled to find out what it means to be free of the sense of self; some have this occur by accident. With some, the experience turns into a permanent knowingness, and with others it fades and gives way again to the sense of self.

I have to say that life and living becomes far more interesting and profound when the mind is clear of self-centric thoughts, fears, and obsessive objectification of the world.

I am in the process of editing a new book in which I describe my lifetime of unusual, perhaps mystic, experiences (not all, but key ones) that led me to this uncovering of what is beneath the self and even consciousness. While I had always had a question about my own existence and why the world is the way it is, it wasn't until my 50s that I seriously began to enquire into my own sense of self. The reason was to get beyond suffering. So in this way I suppose it's akin to the way people have always been explorers, whether to discover a new continent, an unspoiled part of the world, or a dimension that most people have no idea or interest about. What, then, has compelled explorers to explore?

So to answer your question, personally, the need to know has come by way of an impulse. Why suffer if you don't have to? And why be conflicted or tortured by the mind and its constant, habitual attitudes and emotional ups and downs?

Nearly all of the attention of human beings is placed upon the outer world (so-called), which is the object of the attention of the subject (what the self is). This is a continuous distraction from knowing what we are, and if the self is not uncovered to be an illusion then we as individuals, societies, and nations continue to wage violence and conflict. If we want a better world we have to start with ourselves, because this is where the problem begins. I was tired of my own conflict within myself and in all sorts of relationships and interactions.

You mentioned Brian Cox. I have found that nearly all scientists, regardless of their brilliance, default to a materialist, limited worldview. This is because we as a human species have inherited a million years of conditioning that informs us of what is possible and what is real, and it causes us to accept that we are separate from all else. Science works within a box, because science is made of human beings. Of course, some scientists have managed to break out, including Tesla, Bohm, Einstein, Bohrs, Penrose, and a few others, but most are not aware of their owns sense of self and how it limits their perceptions and conclusions. So while I find Brian Cox interesting on one level, I also find him quite limited, similar to deGrasse Tyson, Sean Carrol, and others of their ilk.

The purpose of my articles is to stimulate interest in exploring what the reader is beyond the superficial. I am not interested in telling the reader what she is but rather to guide her back to her own self, because as I have written many times, the only proof of who you are is you, so we each need to break the habit of relying on secondhand information to define us, our thoughts, and our actions — if we are compelled to do so.