Question: I am under the impression that in western culture, it is quite common to conceive the Self as an illusion — probably as an import from eastern religions, and in particular from Buddhism, and in connection with the widespread practice of meditation.

That is, to see the Self as a collection of psychological dispositions, and so on, and in particular to conceive of reality as a continuum where nothing starts and nothing ends, and nothing exists separated — I think that in Buddhism it is called dependent arising.

People often speak about having had a spiritual experience in which they realized that everything is One and all distinctions are an illusion.

It seems to me that people are disposed to accept that without much issue.

But I also have the opposite impression about Free Will — that people have a lot more trouble letting go of that concept and of conceiving it as an illusion.

What is that which has Free Will, if the Self is an illusion?

What is that which merits praise or blame, or bears moral responsibility, if all arises dependently?

How can we let go of one (the Self) and not the other (Free Will)?

Have any philosophers discussed this last question?

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**Note** — Naturally these questions dissolve within the framework of compatibilist Free Will, and therefore, to clarify, I am concerned with how this problem is dealt with within a layperson or libertarian view of Free Will.

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**Note #2** — I realize this is not a purely philosophical question. One might say that it is a scientific question. I'd say it is both. That a question cannot be solved a priori from one's couch does not mean that it is not philosophical. See for example Dennett's Consciousness Explained which is a 500 pages long scientifically informed influential philosophy book.

Answer: 
Freewill is actually most commonly discussed with regard to the Self. Freewill is the defining attribute of an entity that has "agency" over their actions. The exact meaning of this concept is one which has not been fully resolved, creating disagreement among philosophers. It doesn't even always cross cultural barriers, for Eastern philosophers often have very different things to say about the Self than Western philosophers do.

If one has experienced a spiritual experience which has lead one to believe all is connected and that the Self is an illusion, then is it not unreasonable to presume that agency is also an illusion, at least as the layman's version we consider today. However, this would only be half of the story, for the meaning of freewill, self, and agency are not universally agreed upon. One who has had such a Oneness event would most likely find the most valuable questions and resounding statements of truth be made with respect to universal concepts within that Oneness, not simply human words which have highly divisive meanings.

In other words, it is not unreasonable to surmise that those who have such spiritual experiences find these questions to simply be the wrong questions. They may be useful in the lesser scheme of things to further one towards the right questions, but such spiritual individuals often advise against becoming attached to them.

As for many specifics in your questions, they show a tendency to refer to Buddhist philosophy. You may be able to ask a similar, more narrowly phrased, question or questions on [Buddhism.SE](https://buddhism.stackexchange.com/) address the particular attributes of Buddhist philosophy rather than that of philosophy in general.

Edit: One approach seen in Western philosophy which is close to what you describe is to use deeper and wider selves to explore these scenarios. One I can think of is Arne Naess's "Ecological Self:" "The Ecological Self is that with which the Self relates to." This does not remove Self completely from the equation, but it does explore alternatives to the layman's approaches.
In the Western tradition, there is the scepticism of Hume; and Kants response - the self at one level, being a stream of raw impressions from sense and concepts from the intellect; but this is bound into a unity - the unity of apperception - through synthesis.

To put it differently - and maybe allegorically, the surface of the coffee, in this cup of coffee is a flat unitary surface, but looking more closely it's unitary surface dissolves into a stream of molecules in thermal equilibrium with the air above it, and the coffee below it; this in one view, is the more 'fundamental'; from another view, both obtain.

This view appears to be consonant in some ways with Buddhism; if one takes into account, as you say, of *dependent arising* (*pratitya samutpada*); then Nagarjuna, wrote in his *Verses on the Centre* (*Madhyamaka*):

> 
> Whatever arises dependently is explained as nothing
> 
> 
> Thus dependent attribution is the middle way
> 
> 
> Since there is nothing whatever that is not dependently existent
> 
> 
> For that reason there is nothing whatsoever that is not empty
> 
> 
> 

Emptiness, or *sunyata*, is roughly not to have *svabhava*, existence that is its own ground.

Dignana, the Buddhist logician, given dependent arising, inferred that atoms must be momentary: they come to be - are - and pass away; this is unlike the atomism of Democritus, where atoms are permanent.

Intriguingly this does rather sound like the virtual particle swarms in QFT...!

Free will is a Western concept; and Kant, I take it, fits it somehow into his architecture of the self - but I'm not sure of the details; perhaps some scholar knowing Kant more, may come along and fill in this sketch.

I'm not sure, either, how it fits into Buddhist notions of the self.