Talk:Unity and interconnectedness/Archive 1
This page has been moved to an archived sub page in order to make room for the Flow extension.
It's worth noting that claims which the universe by its very definition is comprised of a single unified substance of which we are all a part of is a very basic and logically coherent point of view. This can be argued based on the reasoning that at every level of any system of behaviours complexity, it is inextricably woven into its surrounding systems ad infinitum through mutual interdependent interactions which cannot be defined separately from each other on any basis beyond our subjective experiences of perceivable visual differences. This is an idea which holds true throughout all aspects of physical existence and logically indicates that no individual system or concept such as the self or any other can ever truly be considered as separate from the singular whole.
As a thought experiment which assumes that the realizations found within these states of unity are genuinely based on a rational and logically sound perspective, there are two alternate hypothesis regarding the innate inability for human beings to feel this knowledge of unity within our everyday perspective despite the fact that we can logically understand it.
The first of these is that perhaps this illusion of separateness formed because it is an evolutionary advantage for the ego to feel intrinsically separate from and more significant than the external environment as a means of ensuring the motivation for survival.
The second of these hypotheses is that the illusion of separateness does not stem from a hardware problem but a software problem. It is entirely possible that unity may well be the default perspective through which human beings originally operated, but it has been suppressed through a purely cultural or, more specifically, linguistic problem. This could potentially stem from the way that despite the many obvious benefits of language, it pays a price through completely reorganizing our thought structure and perception of the world into a system of intrinsically separate labels that in reality are merely glimpses of a unified whole. It’s an overcoming of this deeply embedded illusion that hallucinogens and meditation could theoretically overcome by suppressing the linguistic thought structure of the ego and allowing our consciousness to see reality for what it really is.
If the universal definition of the self can be defined as “the thinker behind one's thoughts”, identifying a separate individual component besides the singular whole which serves this purpose seems to be inherently impossible on both a physical and a philosophical level. This realization (which may well be overly simplified or completely wrong) indicates that one is permitted to use terms such as “I”, “you”, and so on, but not because they refer to an empirical and separate self. Instead we are permitted to use them simply because they are convenient symbolic approximations or linguistic tools for use in conversation which, through social interactions with others, we have been taught to believe as something much objective than they really are.