meekerdb wrote:
>
>> You picture consciousness as something inherently personal. But you can
>> be
>> conscious without there being any sense of personhood, or any experience
>> related to a particular person (like in meditation). So that assumption
>> doesn't seems to be true.
>>
>> Also you think that memory has to be conserved in order for the
>> experience
>> to continue consistently. This is also not true, we can experience things
>> that are totally disconnected from all memories we have, yet still it is
>> the
>> I (not the "I") that experiences it. For example on a drug trip, you can
>> literally forget every trace of what your life was like, in terms of any
>> concretely retrievable memory (you can even forget you are human or an
>> animal). So why can't we lose any *concrete* memory after death and
>> experience still continues consistently (and if it does you have to
>> surive
>> in some way - it makes no sense to have a continuous experience while you
>> totally die).
>> You also don't remember being an infant (probably), yet you were that
>> infant
>> and are still here.
>> Saying that we are the sum of our memory is very simplistic and just
>> isn't
>> true in terms of how we experience (you remember almost nothing of what
>> you
>> have experienced).
>
>
> But in what sense did you experience when you were an infant? You can't
> really see
> anything until your brain organizes to process the visual signals from
> your eyes. So your
> visual experiences were different and limited as a new born that at a few
> months of age.
Yes, this is probably true. I don't know what it is like to be an infant,
and probably I won't know as long as I am alive.
meekerdb wrote:
>
> Nobody remembers how they learned to see (or hear or walk) but that kind
> of memory is
> essential to having experiences. I think it is a mistake to think of a
> person as some
> core "soul". The person grows and is created by interaction of the
> genetic provided body
> and the environment. We tend to overlook this because most of the growth
> occurs early in
> life before we have developed episodic memories
I agree. You actually strenghten my point.
meekerdb wrote:
>
> and the inner narrative we call
> "consciousness".
Consciousness is not a inner narrative. Consciousness is the sense of being.
The inner narrative is the sense of personhood. We can be conscious without
an inner narrative, like in meditation.
meekerdb wrote:
>
>>
>> So if you say it is death, you only refer to a superficial aspect of the
>> person, namely their body and explicit memory. Sure, we tend to indentify
>> with that, but that doesn't mean that there isn't something much more
>> important. The particular person may just be an expression of something
>> deeper, which is conserved, and is the real essence of the person, and
>> really all beings: Their ability to consciously, consistently experience.
>> We tend to find that scary, as it makes us part of something so much
>> greater
>> that all our attachments, possesions, achievements, memory, beliefs and
>> security are hardly worth anything at all, in the big picture. But if
>> they
>> aren't, what are we then? Since most of us have not yet looked deeper
>> into
>> ourselves than these things, we feel immensly treatened by the idea that
>> this is not at all what is important about us. It (apparently) reduces us
>> to
>> nothing.
>> But isn't it, when we face it from a more open perspective, tremendously
>> liberating and exciting? By confronting that, we can free us from all
>> these
>> superficial baggage like things and relations and identity (freeing
>> mentally
>> speaking, of course), and see the true greatness of what we are which is
>> beyond all of this.
>
> Were you "beyond it all" when you were a fetus?
We are beyond time, so clearly we were beyond it all at this time. Yet the
fetus is not beyond it all, since he is just a limited object (a quite
amazing object, to be sure). Strictly speaking, I was not a fetus, I
experienced myself as a fetus, which doesn't change what I am. Note that
here I am using I as the absolute I ("I -am-ness") not the relative I of
personhood (I versus you).
meekerdb wrote:
>
> How great was that?
I don't know. Being a fetus might be a peaceful experience, or like sleep.
But the point is that it doesn't matter how great the experience was, since
what we are is beyond particular experiences (it is experiencing itself).
Even when I feel absolutely terrible I still am beyond all, I just don't
realize it. The very fact that the experience passes shows that I am beyond
it (clearly when it is over I am beyond it).
But even during very horrible circumstances it seems that it is possible to
feel being untouched by it. Like the yogis that bear horrible pain without
any visible sign of disturbance.
benjayk
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