Comment by Dilettante_
2 months ago
My position is that we are nothing but our circumstances(I'm assuming that we're in agreement that genetics, pre-birth nutrition etc, are part of these circumstances and not of the 'soul' you're after?), or to put it more directly: We are our circumstances. Our Soul Is That. There is nothing that is "already inside".
The tree does not exist in isolation, separate from the patterns of rain and sunshine that shape its growth. "The separation is an illusion".
I have indeed been on the same path as you of trying to shed delusions and applying the scientific method, and have up to this point found no indication of any "causeless cause" to steer me besides the fundamental is-ness of the universe.
Put bluntly, I believe that if you hadn't started with the assumption of a soul, you would be entirely unable to arrive at the conclusion of a soul by rational methods. And starting by assuming the unproven instead of emptyness is epistemological cheating.
> There is nothing that is "already inside".
Have you seen babies, or puppies? You would easily be able to confirm for yourself that creatures are born with distinct personalities. Its not just chemistry or nurture.
> "The separation is an illusion"
But you don't really think this. You don't really think you are a tree. You do think you are distinct.
>You would easily be able to confirm for yourself that creatures are born with distinct personalities
Refer to my previous post: "I'm assuming that we're in agreement that genetics, pre-birth nutrition etc, are part of these circumstances and not of the 'soul' you're after?"
That's not some mysterious transcendant soul, that's genetics. Literally the exact same thing as a computer program. Dog breeds are specifically bred(programmed) to exhibit certain character traits, for example.
>You don't really think you are a tree. You do think you are distinct.
You missed the point of the argument. Just as the tree is not separate from its circumstances, neither am I.
You brought up "know thyself" so I assumed we were pulling from a similar corpus and brought up "the illusion of separation" as a mutually familiar point that didn't need much elaboration, sorry about that.
Also, it's not so much that I "think" I am distinct, more that I "believe" it, to put it in the terms you used earlier. I am conditioned to consider certain things "me" and others not.
Really I am no more distinct from the tree than, say, my fingernail is distinct from my nosebone. They belong to the same Individual.
> Dog breeds are specifically bred(programmed) to exhibit certain character traits, for example.
And yet all dogs have their own unique characters, no? They are not the same individual, right?
> You brought up "know thyself" so I assumed we were pulling from a similar corpus and brought up "the illusion of separation" as a mutually familiar point that didn't need much elaboration, sorry about that.
I don't know what corpus you refer to. Please explain if you like. I'm not basing what I'm saying on a corpus - of course I've read books, but I am giving you my personal view on things.
> Also, it's not so much that I "think" I am distinct, more that I "believe" it, to put it in the terms you used earlier. I am conditioned to consider certain things "me" and others not.
I have heard this sort of (nondual) thinking before and completely dispute it. I personally cannot access anyone else's mind or body, I haven't no idea what you are thinking. I can only pretend to be doing this. There is a self, we live it continuously. There are times when we are fully present, where we are so in the immediate experience, that we can move out of linguistic/common concepts perhaps, but this is still within oneself.
For me, it is more that each person is a world in their own right, rather than "us" all being in the same universe. We simply do not have the level of interconnectivity you believe is there, when you say you are the tree or me. Furthermore, it really is very hard to see the point you are making when we have a disagreement - plainly there is a distinction.
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