“…furthermore there is no separation between people. Everything is interconnected and the biggest secret of all to me, is the extent to which individuality is an illusion…”
So, I was reading something about the flaws in human mentality and apparently, we aren’t individuals and we don’t have self/personal identity. It’s only an illusion.
If individuality and self identity are illusions and we aren’t separate, independent beings…we’re all nodes of the universal process, does that mean “I” don’t technically exist? Since I’m not really me. I’m everything and everyone…??? or is everyone me? Or is everyone-everyone? Are we all just one big awareness/consciousness? I don’t get it. Thinking about it is making me sick because if i’m not really me then what or who am I?
Most people on this forum think the self exists.
I don’t think it does. Like you said, I think it’s an illusion.
If it is an illusion you are not everyone else and no one else is you.
There is no you, or I or she or he or them.
I do think it’s a depressing fact and I’m not sure what’s the best way to deal with it. But pretending or ignoring doesn’t seem like a good solution to me.
The “self” is there, but it is always situated out in a particular world that evolves over time from the cradle to the grave.
On the other hand, what credible evidence is there to suggest that “I” am but a “node of the universal process”. What on earth can that possibly mean? It’s more like a thought experiment, right?
kandee - I don’t know the context of the quote, but I know that you have misrepresented it. The quote states “the extent to which individuality is an illusion.” You have immediately transmogrified this to “we don’t have an identity”.
I haven’t read the link, but I take this to mean that you are not fundamentally separate from others, nor is there some part of an otherwise contantly changing “you” that is the true “you”. “No man is an island”, and no part of man is an island, either.
If you accept the idea that reality is infinite, it means we are more than finite things such as identity. Your causal chains will outlive your body. You can develop a sense of self, but that is an illusion only when compared to a more true sense. Identity isn’t 100% illusion. It’s just a tool, imperfect, but selected by nature to help you.
Realizing that your compound form of self came about by the you taking in things from the outside world and digesting them. But they are still the outside world, just in a different way. The dualities of inner and outer force are only useful for differentiation. The inner and the outer are one. As such, the world and the self are also one. Just limited in how much they interact, by some kinds of factors. There is a self, it’s just that there is more to it than the typical confines of self.
The all is the all, including everything, yes. But a consciousness/will/person has its boundaries, does it not? – unless you are implying that we are all aspects of a universal consciousness – which is an idea which there is even less to show for than that we are individual consciousnesses.
I think that boundaries are naturally part of infinity, although that may sound contradictory to some.
I believe that there is a partial universal intelligence that many tie into. It’s not absolute. It’s not all-powerful. But some people believe they have seen it in meditations and in near death experiences.
There is no inner and outer. There is a feeling, there is a demand, that there is something more interesting that you can do with yourself, more meaningful, more purposeful than your existence is today. That is the demand. That is why there is this restlessness. You become restless because of this drive in you, which is put in there by the society or culture, that makes you feel that there is something more interesting, more meaningful, more purposeful that your life can be than what it is today.
Oh, ok. I was confused this morning. I was kind of thinking about it as the non-absoluteness of boundaries. I was thinking it’s kind of a stretch to call that kind of thinking speculative.