Personality perspective
As mentioned above, the Buddha saw this "personal identity" as a psychopathological burden that we carry throughout life. This "personality perspective" (sakkaya ditthi) was seen to be pathological and unhealthy because it is productive of pain and suffering to oneself as well as to others. It is this "personality perspective" that is responsible for the "identity crisis" described by Erik Erikson. This "identity crisis" is what the Buddha called "uncertainty" (vicikiccha), which is the inability to decide what one should identify with. "Uncertainties" like "Who am I now?" "Who was I in the past?" and "What will I be in the future" can arise only if one is conscious of a "self." This "uncertainty" is also the inability to decide whether to take sides with our personalised emotional impulses (asava) and become pleasure seekers (kamasukhallikanuyoga), or to take sides with our personalised conscience (hiri ottappa) and become ascetics (attakilamatanuyoga). But asceticism is not better than pleasure seeking. The Buddha saw that asceticism is based on mere suppressive, self-denying vows (silabbata) that split the personality and create conflict within. The person who is free from the "personality perspective" is free from uncertainty and self-denying vows. Such individuals are able to successfully eliminate an emotional impulse, because they do not give it power by personalising it. They do not see the impulse as a part of themselves, and therefore can easily let it go.
The solution to the problem of self-esteem, which the Buddha offers, is simple. It is to attack the problem at its root. It is to give up personalising and the measuring. In other words, we have to depersonalise what has been personalised. This is something that people generally hesitate to do. They hate to lose their "self" however unpleasant it may be. To lose the "self," they feel, is to lose 'their very "being" or "existence." They do not realize that their notions of "self," "being," "existence," and "identity" are only pathological concepts, which they have acquired through the personalization of perceived objects. Because we do not generally meet people who have consciously rooted out their “self identity” we think it is abnormal to be without such a “self identity.” The absence of a “self identity,” does not reify a person or turn a person into a “thing,” such as a robot. It only turns a selfish, frightened, defensive, and unhappy person into an unselfish, fearless, cooperative, kind, and happy one. It leads a self-centred person to become interested in the welfare of others, to see that another’s pain is as important as one’s own. Such a selfless individual does not make a distinction between one-self and others, because to do so is not only to be egoistic and self-centred, but also to be egotistic and selfish.
In Buddhism this conscious removal of the “self identity” is regarded as a hallowed, extraordinary, “supernormal” (ariya) condition, which is a superior state of mental health. Because this is not the ordinary human state, it is also seen as a “superhuman” (uttarimanussa), transcendent (lokuttara), and divine (brahma) state. This absence of the notion of “self” is not merely a peculiar Buddhist concept, even Jesus seems to refer to it in the Christian Gospels: "He who loses his self for my sake shall find it" (Mat. 10:39). This concept is also found in Hinduism where enlightenment is seen as the loss of the "individual self" when it merges with the "Universal Self" of God (Brahma). This is also the common mystical experience of “at-one-ment” in all theistic religions, where the soul unites with God. If the individual soul unites with the universal soul of God, the individual soul cannot remain separate, just as when a river enters the ocean, it cannot remain as a separate entity.