Thread: "I" Don't Exist (May Shatter Your Current Beliefs!

We are not everything! Supply proof. That is all I ask. I supply proof, in turn, that we are not everything: Nobody can predict me. No one can tell what I'm going to do next. No one knows what I'm thinking. If we truly were everything, and in truth only one being, somebody would be able to know these things other than me. I'm different because I'm seperate, and I'm seperate because I'm different.

Yes, that's the basic misunderstanding that maintains suffering in the world.

Sorry, but this thought just fluttered through my mind. It may not be exactly tasteful, but that's brains for you, always thinking the dardnest things eh?

Car is driving head on with Car 2.
Car 2: is driving head on with Car.
Car: It's okay, since we'll all one, he'll know that he has to swerve right.
Car 2 dosen't, and crashes into Car.
Car: oh.

How could car two know when he's to busy believing an illusion?

No, we're certainly not "everything" - each of us is an individual - at least as far as we can tell from our limited perspective. The illusion (if it is, in fact, an illusion) is real for us. We are trapped in these individual bodies, with individual thoughts - all our hopes, dreams, and fears are passengers in a blood and flesh body - but only for a finite period of time. It is these thoughts and emotions that compell us to think in terms of "I" and "me". And, of course, we feel that these thoughts and emotions are continuous and we want them to last forever, along with the fragile vessel that carries them.

Perhaps there is an underlying unity, but we have no direct access to it. We can only think of it with symbols. When we contemplate our existence (or non-existence), we can only consider it in terms of what we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, and think. But all of those things are transient too. Everything is transient. What's on the inside, what's on the outside.

Consider the statement about the copy of myself. No, it could never happen (unless you're a Born Again Christian - in which case, at least scientifically, it's about the only way resurrection of the dead could happen!). Let's just say it could happen. An exact, perfect duplicate of me, my memories, down to the exact state of my brain could be replicated after my destruction. After giving it some thought, I can convince myself that it's at least possible that it really is the same me - yes, I am still alive! I can remember the same things and have the same skills and desires and faults as before. Ok. This "copy" really is me.

Now what happens if the operator of this fantastic machine decides to take away a couple of memories? Or skills? Or better yet, let's say I have everything I had before, but I get a new skill - like a perfect singing voice, or better "people skills". Am I still the same person? At what point would I become some other person?

How would this be different from the "continuous" life I've been living? I started out as a small child, with few memories and little understanding - am I the same person I was then?? As a youth, I was impetuous and brash, loud and silly. Now I am more often introverted - quiet and introspective (though sometimes still a little silly). Am I the same person now as I was then?

If you break up the continuity this way, it looses its meaning. If you took the right parts from each of us and added them together, you could make any one individual you wanted. I doubt this is incubusfunk's idea of "we are everything". It seems more likely that as we contemplate the nature of self, we realize that the boundaries are not as well defined as our senses would have us believe. As we increase our understanding of these expanded boundaries, we begin to see more of the unity of which we are a part - our fellow man, the creatures we share the earth with, the very elements themselves.

I take it that I am this body. If my head gets chopped off, no semblance of an 'I' will probably exist

Assuming that you all share the same nature as I do, then "you" are that which pervcieves. You can't pinpoint the "I" because you aren't a self-observing entity(or at least don't know that what you are observing is yourself).

Why does it matter? I'll just assume that I am this body. That way I can do my best to keep it alive.

I think of this universe as a dream.. we are here.. but we are all dreams. Who dreamt it up, dunno. How long their gonna stay dreaming.. who knows. If you dream long enough.. the charicters become real people in a sense.. the scenery becomes familiar and VERY realistic..

I think that when you say you are created.... why not say you are imagined. It could very well be, this whole universe was created by the mind of one. And perhaps that explains the existance of God.

Think of it this way.. when you dream, you play God a little. So whats not to say God is a dreamer? Who knows maybe parts of our dreams can develop a consciousness.

It's ok to assume a body...

But still, where does "I" begin and end, how far does it really go?

I think of the body as a very small part of the whole of us....cuz individuality is ultimately futile, and I don't mean this in some conformist way.

Originally posted by Taosaur
Woot! *No-self!

Take your time digesting this realization, Airrick, it can get a little messy. *

My first direct experience of no-self in this life was age 14. *I slept out on the lawn, and somehow consciousness arose independent of ego. *My senses were wide open--I could hear birdsong and soft wind, see sunlight through my eyelids, smell grass--but there was nothing in the middle of those senses marking off boundaries of \"this is me\" and \"this is not me.\" *Instead I experienced everything as continuity--perceiver, perception, and perceived as one fluid whole. *Quite liberating.

right, i experienced this 2 daays ago, and now i'm thinking about "life", "time", even "excistence" and that kind of stuff, more than i did my previous 13 years (for "I" am 14)... and it feals, thinks and is very very strange and... yeah, strange and really undescribable....

and my parents think i'm going crazy about some ideas of mine...