Of course, it seems to us that we are this body, but the reality is that this body is just a vehicle of ours. We are not the body; we are the divine spirit, the soul, the atman and the body is a vehicle that is meant to be used to achieve the purpose of this human life. Unfortunately, instead of using this body as a vehicle to arrive at the meaning of life, we think we are the body and start living as the body, the mind, the intellect, the ego. The ego takes over the command of the soul which we truly are. The ego starts commanding the soul, making the soul irrelevant, though in reality, the soul is everything. The soul is part of God, part of the over soul and instead of being the real identity of the soul, we unfortunately, become the false identity - the myth of the ego, the mind, the body, the intellect. Because we are confused and we believe that we are the body, we don’t live and achieve the main purpose of life, which is to realize God. We live thinking that the goal of life is to be happy because the body wants happiness, the body wants joy, it wants sense pleasures and we are so busy trying to pursue these pleasures that we forget who we truly are. We forget our true identity; we forget we are not the body. It’s time for us to stop and think: are we this body? Isn’t this body just made of five elements? Do we not occupy this body when we are born and then we die, leaving the body behind? If not, what happens at death? The only logical conclusion when the body is burnt or buried is that it was just the composition of the five natural elements. It was not us. We entered the body and we left the body. But we are not the body; we are the divine spirit.
No; by the time we are born, we will have been our body for nine months, about six of them with a functioning brain, able to record experience. At birth, there is a rudimentary individual personality overlaid upon the genetic heritage.
No; when we die, the whole package is dead - body, mind, memory, character, - no more, defunct, ceased, gone - an ex-person.
you don’t know that, causality only applies to objects and we live in an infinite universe etc, there is no first cause, ergo causality [physics] is not the base of existence. I am not speaking of something otherworldly, but pertaining to ultimate nature of existence.
I didn’t get it from science - I came upon it all by myself. I’m that arrogant.
But not intolerant. You can have all the suppositions, speculations and fantasies you want. So can Air.
However, if AiR is entitled to go around all the forums, including everyone else in his/her/its fantasy, which, after all, is nothing more than his/her/its personal opinion, then I feel entitled to counter that blanket statement with one of my own, equally unsupported by evidence.
If you’re trying to say that there’s mind/body duality, then I think you’ve got to realize that anything the “mind” does, is correlated to something that the brain does in every instance, then understand that therefore with language there is no need to separate the 2 and just accept that the “mind” stuff is superfluous and unnecessary.
We are this body so long as we inhabit it. There is no mind/body duality. What happens when the body dies is a matter of speculation. No one has come back from the dead to tell us about afterlife of mind.
Thought experiment–place a living brain in a jar. Connect it to a computer. Will the results be signals about a previously experienced body or will they be about the situation of existing in a jar?
The problem with the notion that I am nothing without my body is not really an immediate metaphysical problem, but rather a virtual problem that arises when we try to overload linguistic structures that deal fundamentally in strict subject vs. object dualities.
In order words, we can say that these statements are essentially equivalent:
I am nothing without my body.
I am.
I.
Statement #1 one attempts to make the kind of typical “synthetic judgement” that is satisfying to law-abiding Western sensibilities. Statement #2 does away with the logical ephemera and makes a plain affirmation of the existential status of the self. And finally, statement #3 attempts to overcome all forms of duality by way of simply uttering the name of the infinitely unknowable Ding-an-sich, ie, the ontological ground all possible worldly experience.
Are you the kind of person who can’t appreciate and value the entire journey, I mean a real physical journey like on the way to a vacation spot? Do you get restless along the way, don’t know how to observe everything around you as you go along toward your destination? Can’t enjoy the scenery, can’t see it all in its totality as part of the journey?
The human body obviously has a great deal about it to be respected considering how long a time to took to evolve to where it is today, to where the human being is today. Hate to tell you this, but it is a great part of who you are, it houses your brain which gives rise to your mind. It houses everything and gives rise to everything which allows you to experience what you call soul - probably no more than those wonderful chemicals and patterns in the brain interfacing with your outside world.
You are not pure spirit, soul and why would you choose to be? When was the last time when two divine spirits made love, fell in love, walked in the rain, ate a delicious meal, heard beautiful music, appreciated a great poem?
You can’t be holy until you’ve learned to embrace all parts of your existence.
Anyway, it’s very possible that the only soul you have is the one on which you walk in your shoes.
Go ahead. Embrace the dark side. You won’t find your so-called soul until you do. Dare to be human. lol
It doesn’t matter what the brain experiences: the brain is a body, though an abbreviated one. The brain doesn’t go to heaven; it goes into the coffin. (I imagine its experience would be that of a phantom body, the same way amputees experience a phantom leg. Except it would seem a lot more like being buried alive - in total darkness, without sensory input. I imagine it would be quite horrible. I wonder whether a stripped-down brain could will itself to cease functioning.)
Yes, but the brain IS the thing - the pilot, in a manner of speaking.
Who is to say that the jar around it doesn’t become its new body, that it wouldn’t adapt to it, come to thoroughly embrace that jar? Especially if the brain in question has always been a pretty self-determined entity, especially if its new home is a pretty-colored, beautifully formed jar.
I don’t think its experience would be that of a phantom body - since it is, in actuality, a part of the brain ITSELF which causes the amputee to still have the sensation of the limb.
The brain might miss its vehicle for a little while though. So it loses its Rolls Royce and has to settle for a little red wagon otherwise known as a jar. It’ll adapt.
Why would it? It might just enjoy this new habitat it lives in. A change of scenery might be just what it needs.
It might also depend on the individual brain. Don’t go throwing that wet baby out.
By the way, the coffin is the transportation whereby the brain gets to heaven… but only if it has earned its just reward.
Just give that brain a chance. That’s all it needs - that’s all it’s asking for.
None of that is relevant to AiR’s hypothesis. As long as there is any biological machinery - any physical thing that requires care and maintenance - it’s a body. Air is talking about a non-physical component, that can survive independently and go someplace else when all of the body is dead.
Good point. The brain is intimately connected to the organs and cells of the body, and would detect such a dramatic change.
all that matrix stuff only applies if you were born into it ~ the brain was grown independently. even then perhaps the brain can detect the difference, a brain is an extremely sensitive organ.
The body is not just a vehicle. It is what makes perception - and all of experience - possible. We do not become who we are as isolated whisps of consciousness. We are not merely attached to or hosted by the body, but the body is in fact part of what makes us -us. You are you because of your biological idiosyncrasies, because you are sighted, because you have a nervous system, because of the way you feel pleasure, and of course because of the way you feel pain. One does not enter the body like a corporeal suit. The complex and spirited consciousness you hail as divine emerges necessarily as one embodied. The soul, or the spirit, exists in the momentum of a person and his impact.
[tab]I don’t want to derail this thread into a discussion of Christianity, but if you died and were resurrected (e.g. everlasting life, like Jesus), would you necessarily know that you had died?[/tab]
Not necessarily but who can know for sure. To begin with, two different natures on the one hand and on the other, one nature.
Aside from that, it would depend - you might have had to bring your memories with you and also to have been aware of the entire dying process, beginning to end and afterwards…after death.
But “real” death is the brain having shut down for good - caput. Memories are a function held within a certain part of the brain. One’s gone, the other’s gone.
It might also depend on the kind of “body” which you took on after having died - recognizing one which was different.
BUT, that being said, you WOULD HAVE HAD TO maintain some form of what was then human consciousness, don’t you think?
But one’s humanity would have dissolved into nothingness…and this organism which we are would have lost all function.
If we compare the mind of the brain to the scent of the rose, I personally feel that it too would dissolve in the aether.
There can never be anything but speculation - or a strong desire to believe what one wants and falling into that.
Please don’t.