---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <s3raphita@...> wrote :
No wonder you need to claim an Emerson quote. Damn yanks were always confused but it must make perfect sense across the pond in the local parish. The quote was from Walt Whitman. But Emerson could have supplied a choice sentence. As could Thoreau or William James or Emily Dickinson. All Yanks and making perfect sense. If "we is all one" then why isn't there confusion of memories and identities between all these "apparent" individuals? That's the million-dollar question. Sometimes the wires do get crossed and there is just such a confusion - as when individuals claim to suddenly experience a previous life - as Barry has so claimed on FFL. Why should it be a previous life of Barry's and not the life experience of another man entirely as seen by The One, the transcendental self which is witnessing everything? As memories belong to our lower self they are localised to each individual brain/body. Normally each of us is locked into our own apparent and separate personalities. If we weren't the game of life would be a cacophony that would leave everyone paralysed so the seeming separation has a survival benefit. And this way we can love and hate each other. Exciting huh? If true. I suspect there's a rather easier way of explaining it. How about this "transcendental self" not actually existing and the reason we think it does is because we can occasionally attain states of mind where our normal cognitive apparatus is changed so that what we usually see as background space becomes all we see thus giving rise to the idea that this transcendental vastness is ever present but we don't normally see it? After all, the only evidence we have is down to experiences gained via drugs or meditation, it is thus very interpretation dependent - we have a good trip and look around for explanations, so far the only ones we really have are all of the "cosmic" variety, I'm expecting something that fits in with our knowledge of evolutionary processes. It's not as much fun granted, but a proper science of mind is going to have to take into account all experiences we can possibly have and the breaking up of normal functioning in meditation is going to be rather revealing as it's a quiet systematic process, I'm sure the correlation between areas of the brain are going to change at each claimed "level" of consciousness. Apart from the lack of something to re-incarnate, my main objection is an evolutionary one; if we could remember past lives it would be so amazingly useful we'd use the skill all the time, but we can't. That makes me suspect that all claimed experiences of such or flashes of other lives however gained are something else entirely. I convert for evidence. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <emptybill@...> wrote : S3 Each of us is that One Self. Oh ... I get it. The great shruti of the Brahmarishi-s. "Us is One". No wonder you need to claim an Emerson quote. Damn yanks were always confused but it must make perfect sense across the pond in the local parish. If "us is one" then when my current thought "I am Emptybill" suddenly ends, as all thoughts do, why isn't my next thought "I am Bhari2"? And then my next thought ... "I am Willy the Moron or "Us Chanuchistani's need to stick together"? If "we is all one" then why isn't there confusion of memories and identities between all these "apparent" individuals?
