I've been watching this online philosophy of mind class for sh*ts and giggles, and one of the topics reminded me of something that i haven't thought about in a while, am not particularly educated on and would love to hear your thoughts...

One of the lectures was discussing trying to isolate the self, a sense of 'I' that exists somewhere, drawing the conclusion that while we frequently use the 'I' term in our language, there may well be no definable self in there. The professor asked you to close your eyes for a minute, and observe the inner goings on.

When I do this, I notice two primary functions... a stream of conscious thoughts and a sort of spotlight of attention. The "I" that I frequently assume is in there behind the curtains, pulling the levers seems to be a figment of my imagination. It was actually kind of shocking how pleasantly 'empty' it feels in there, when I really pay attention to it. Just a void, a river of thoughts and a spotlight of attention.

I suppose this echoes some eastern mysticism, which I would very much like to read more about. (book recs anyone?), as well as traditional western philosophy. I think it goes further though... surpasses semantics and logical games... if there really is no one in particular in there, this would have a major impact in how I view my relation to the world, my life, my death.

This may seem silly, but it has actually kinda shook me to the core. That sensation of wow, can i really be so wrong about something so fundamental? Existential identity type of holy sh*t.

The Buddhists would say no. All form arises from a mutual unified wholeness and all else is illusion.

Of course, 'I' just wrote that to 'you', so go figure...

I think the self is much like time. We created it as a gauge. In order to refer to it as something. I almost feel kind of sad about it. That there is no individual me or that I am not separate from anything. I can understand how "non-returners" would experience rebirth lust. Feeling as if there is a self or an I, is really an amazing feeling. This humanoid existence is pretty cool stuff.

And yet the general consensus is that experiencing what it's like being a god and one with everything is pretty awesome, it's really the other way around as well! Our oneness is experiencing what it would be like to actually think we were an individual self.

I'm blowing my own mind now haha

Yeah Oneness/Source creates/uses us to blow it's own mind (potentially) 7 billion times...

What a 'mind blow' junkie he/we is/are...

Essentially we are artificial intelligence.

*mind blown again*

Silly? Not by a LONG shot. You stumbled onto a gold mine. Here is one link that leads.....IN. There are more "western" teachings in this vein also:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-enquiry

eH

Interesting stuff!

I think it requires a bit of 'shedding skin' to get to the truth. We may think we are this or that, but we are mostly 'conditioning'. We are divine energy expressing itself in a human form, but truly we are really part of everything. Those thoughts we have contain bits of everythings vibrations and energy, and make us who we are.

All we are doing is simply validating ourselves to ourselves all the gawd damned time, and that's keeping us here, and 'seperate' from the fractal flow, even though really we are still it

We are all part of the same thing 'life' so for us to feel connected and at one with each other is reasonable. The notion of I or individual is definitely imo real. Each person has their own unique perspective on reality. No two people can experience reality from the same perspective at the same time so we are individual but connected at the same time. Thats my view and i'm sure others have different views, their own individual view

Exactly!

We are each individual expressions of 'god' that are part of the whole. Maybe we have to be individual because the world has too many tasks for it's upkeep, as i think we are here to look after the earth, or 'god'. Before, there was less of us, and thus less tasks required, unlike hellish now!

i dont know, so i'll just say: netti netti

i would check out alan watts if by chance you haven't yet. hes brilliant

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMRrCYPxD0I

Bhagavad Gita, Upanishads

Wow.

Specifically the Katha Upanishad. Talks in great depth regarding the Self.

The Gita really is an amazing thing. Beyond its time for sure.

I think that the self may exist but that, if it does, you cannot observe it. Trying to observe it is like trying to shoot the gun you're holding. If you're looking at something, that thing must be outside of the mind's eye. When you try to look inward, you are really only externalizing certain parts of consciousness. The "spotlight of attention" cannot shine on itself.

This is just my usual personal belief, of course. It makes no statement of whether or not the self actually exists, but my view has always been that whether or not something exists is meaningless if we cannot observe (or otherwise interact with) it.

I should add that there have been times when I felt that I actually was observing the self, and I would describe the experience as like being sucked into an eternal loop where consciousness seems to both begin and end simultaneously. By loop, I mean that there is no beginning or end and no reference points; everything that ever existed is at the same place and time, so perhaps it would be more appropriate to call it a singularity.

Anyways, if consciousness were a signal, this singularity would be like a feedback loop of consciousness. This usually starts when I try to think about or reference myself in some way while on LSD, and ends up with myself looking at myself looking at myself looking at... thus a feedback loop occurs. It seems never-ending, but that is probably only because consciousness is somewhat discontinuous at such points, meaning that I exit the loop as a different person. I imagine that if consciousness becomes a loop, then the eventual break in the loop means a break in consciousness.

You might enjoy this video of Richard Alpert talking about the psychedelic experience. His words in this video have always inspired me.