Self Inquiry
Who are you..?
I seriously love this exercise. Lets see if we can get somewhere here homies.
When you are asked "who are you?" or you ask yourself, you immediately start running into a lot of 'obviousness' when it comes to answers. You arrive to conclusions at first like
So you know exactly how to keep neurons active and firing and regulate countless bodily functions at once..?
So, you're completely separate from your environment in that you are this thing that is in a very unique position as to manipulate the surrounding world and act on will? Aren't other people just like that? You can't control their actions any more than you can control a dust devil on mars. Same with our own.
I seriously love this exercise. Lets see if we can get somewhere here homies.
When you are asked "who are you?" or you ask yourself, you immediately start running into a lot of 'obviousness' when it comes to answers. You arrive to conclusions at first like
- Well, I'm the body.But you're not. Like Alan Watts had said, "you mean to tell me you know exactly how to control all those rods and cones in your eye?"[list]
- Well, i'm the mind
So you know exactly how to keep neurons active and firing and regulate countless bodily functions at once..?
- Well, I'm the willpower behind the scenes, back there somewhere in my consciousness.
So, you're completely separate from your environment in that you are this thing that is in a very unique position as to manipulate the surrounding world and act on will? Aren't other people just like that? You can't control their actions any more than you can control a dust devil on mars. Same with our own.
Comments (42)
Surely, "BadensRocks" would be closer to the bone. O:)
Would you PLEASE stop using my Social Security #!
Quoting Albert Keirkenhaur
I am the universe becoming pissed. Which is probably why I don't remember putting those two posts up in, for some reason, a pair of different names.
This my polite way of calling bullshit and hubris. 'The universe' is an identification, which is to say an ego label, but with the pretentiousness to claim that it is 'reality'. No, mate, you do not speak for the universe, you are not aware for the universe. You don't even do it for the little bit writing this grumpy post.
You're saying that the universe is an exaggeration/fabrication of ego?
& I'm ok
I'm me all night
& I'm I all day...
:)
I've got everything I need
I'm the urban spaceman, baby; I can fly
I'm a supersonic guy
As stated in the testimony of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
Nice!
We are billion year old carbon
And we got to get ourselves
Back to the garden
~ Joni Mitchell, 'Woodstock'
The universe is the universe. A plastic bag is the universe becoming a container, and a pile of horse shit is the universe becoming aromatic. Every-damn-thing is the universe being that thing. So the claim amounts to nothing more than the claim to be self-aware. But not so self- aware, it seems, as to see the vacuity of the claim.
If you're everyone and everything, you're no one and nothing.
The folly of arrogance is best explained by the most arrogant one among us.
I am the universe spouting aphorisms.
I'll toss you for the title.
(That goes for all of you)
Proof is in the pudding. Arrogance is the sail on a boat. Unfurl it in the wind and you'll go places you couldn't have otherwise. Unfurl it at the wrong time and you'll find yourself crashed on the rocks.
Don't look to the humble to educate you about timing. They don't know and they never will.
[quote=Mongrel]I am the universe spouting aphorisms.[/quote]
That's an awesome line. Just sayin'
It has the same tone, but it's deeper. It includes that old but beautiful thought that we are the way that the universe looks at itself, its eyes and ears -- and without which nothing.
This just seems majestically misguided.
Many would say that every damn thing is an element of the set of damn things that make up the universe.You seem to be claiming the exact opposite.
Answer then,the following question: If the universe is both the equivalent of a plastic bag,and the equivalent of a pile of horse shit,then would you say that a pile of horse shit is equivalent to a plastic bag?
( B=A and B=C imply A=C)
Also the walrus, when not on the boat of Ra.
Quoting hunterkf5732
I entirely agree. It is intended as a reductio ad absurdum of the quoted and applauded "I am the universe becoming self aware."
I find such statements meaningful within the context of process metaphysics. Under that approach, the universe is one gigantic process and any object or phenomenon is what the universe is doing in that place and time.
So one cannot reduce it to 'the plastic bag is the pile of horse manure' because the plastic bag is what the universe is doing here, now, and the pile of manure is what the universe is doing there, then. I am the universe being self-awarehere, and Un is the universe being self-aware there, and this keyboard is the universe being self-unaware (or not, depending on whether I want to mix my panpsychic leanings in with this) below the ends of my fingers.
I find this approach coherent and strangely satisfying, but I fully understand that many people feel it is a load of New Age baloney.
One can however reduce it to the plastic bag is a container, horse manure smells, and I am self aware with no loss of meaning and even more satisfaction.
* D'you see what I did there? I'm trying out this 'and' instead of 'but' thing. It seems rather contrived to me, but I think I should give it a fair go because it seems that maybe there's an appealing principle behind it.
I don't remember that, have you a quote?
I'm all aboard with everything being connected. 'Each thing is everything being that thing' is a fine and dandy way of understanding everything, but it is superfluous to mention it whenever one talks about a particular thing. In the case in hand it is in particular misleading, because even accepting that awareness ( distinguished from its contents) is universally the same, that is precisely what is not being reflected upon in self inquiry, but the particularity: which is to say the contents of awareness, i.e. the self. If I am the universe being aware, and you are the universe being aware, how come we are not aware of each other's awareness but only of our own? So the metaphysic you espouse fails to explain the phenomenon in question, but the gloss being given misleads one into thinking that it does.
What you've written there is very similar to what I sometimes say to myself. Often the 'everything is a manifestation of the one' vibe - which I first picked up a few years ago influenced partly by Alan Watts - is helpful to me, but sometimes it just seems silly.
The trouble is that, when I then try to get all hard-headed and rationalist about it and address what you call 'the case in hand', expecting to find a solid question that is amenable to rational consideration, I find that there is no clear question. Looking back at the OP, we see the question 'who are you'. When I try to approach this in a rational way, I only ever end up with trivial, reductionist answers - answers such as 'this sequence of episodes of consciousness' or 'this body'.
So when I am in that mode, I end up giving up, and concluding that there is no satisfying answer to be had via a rational approach to the question. I suppose that is because the question is so poorly defined. It is a mantra rather than a formal inquiry. But if it is a mantra, and there is no rationally precise answer to be had, then perhaps there is no information to be lost in offering a response that omits distinctions.
I wonder, is there any way of interpreting the question that allows an answer, but not just one that is either trivial and reductionist, or mystically holistic? If those are the only two choices, I will usually opt for mystically holistic, but being a lifelong rationalist, I could not resist a more rational answer if I could see one that was nontrivial - one that 'explains the phenomenon' as you rather elegantly put it.
I could have written exactly this, myself; we are of one mind. But I have been rather hard on the mystical expressions in this thread; I hope I can explain why.
It seems to me that there are two possibilities in the case of someone who makes the claim, "I am the the universe...'. The first is that it is an ego identification - a theoretical construct that one adopts as one might adopt 'I am a great leader', or 'I am an introvert', or whatever. In such a case one remains, to put it simply, self-centered. One talks the talk of oneness, but walks the walk of ego, accumulating for oneself the kudos of superior awareness and the fleet of rolls-royces of your average guru.
The dangers of sustaining such a contradiction, that I have mentioned earlier are that it leads one into speaking for the universe and sometimes into imagining magical powers of mind reading and influence, manifesting as the dreadful 'law of attraction' for example.
The other possibility is that one experiences a genuine feeling of unity with the universe. In such a case, (and this is a matter of logic - I am not speaking from experience) one must have the same care and affection for others as one has for one's own limbs. If you and I are indeed one, then I must inevitably and literally love my neighbour as myself.
I have just articulated an ideal of identity, which a thoughtful person might find attractive - I want to be that. And that thought leads towards the first possibility, not the second. So that is why I am rather hard-line about this; it is not just a matter of having a pleasant notion of the oneness of the universe, but a total transformation of experience and behaviour. Otherwise the truth of the thing is betrayed, and it becomes an ugly and dangerous lie.
Open your eyes. Look at what you have to accept about yourself to simply claim your humanity. If the Holocaust doesn't challenge you enough... I've got a history of Russia for ya. Six holocausts in a row.
If your soul is pristine enough that you can throw stones.... Be as hard line as you like. You have nothing to teach about unity.
I wouldn't use the love your neighbor test on that.
Are you saying that language is a necessity for the presence of your self?
Yes, language enables the self. What we learn and, how we value our experiences, how we conceptualize what we experience would not be possible without language. While language is not thought it is constitutive of thought.