(no subject)
This was a post in TCC by PFC.Spengler. Interesting to think about.
"I've spent the last decade trying to sort through the garbled information I discovered locked in my head from a bunch of high doses, and this thread is as close as I can come. Either this is all fundamentally true, or I have succeeded brilliantly in creating a delusion that I can fully subscribe to (which would itself then just be another manifestation of the Cosmic Joke...)
The idea that my body is a separate physical structure from the rest of the universe that it exists in, is a delusion that my ego forces on me because my ego only exists inside the constructs of my own head, and so ego forces me to perceive a dualism (self vs other, self vs rest of the universe) which is convenient for day to day existence, but is not real. The idea that “I” am separate from the rest of reality is a lie that “I” make up so that “I” can exist. In ‘reality’, there is no separation, every molecule in my body is part of the mass chemical reaction swirling around me that science calls “the universe”. This swirling reaction is not formless, it has shapes and it has different configurations which blend seamlessly into one another (and we call the transition ‘time passing’, but again in some ways this is illusion) - and the swirling reaction has energy, in fact, it is, literally, the vibration of energy in motion.
I call this sum mass of energy in the universe God - and again, the idea that I am separate from God is an illusion that my ego plays on my intellect. I am not a separate entity from everything else. I am just another vantage point through which the universe can observe and appreciate itself. We’re all god’s children, because we’re all the moment to moment physical manifestation of God in the most literal sense.
It’s taken me several years to wrap my mind around this concept and decide I believe it, but I do, and it’s given me a great deal of comfort in terms of my fear of death. “I” fear death, because death is the end of ego, but then really it is only ego which fears death, and I have come to understand that even though ego, the thing I call I, has a huge grip on my life and creates my stream of consciousness - it is not, really ‘me’. Ego is an illusion that the brain subscribes to moment by moment, but when death comes and ego lets go - well, “I” end, but that doesn’t really mean that the energy that is me ends. I only have this energy in a borrowed sense; it’s not “mine”, it’s just what I’m using to think and feel with right now. When the time comes for ego to let go, that energy does not just turn into dust, it’s released and becomes part of new forms, new ways for the universe to understand and appreciate itself. Even the concept of “appreciation” requires a ‘conscious’ illusion.
I'm not arguing that Ego continues after physical death - I'm arguing that it doesn't matter that it doesn't, because the ego itself is the only thing I have which has the (delusional) facilities to fear death. And that ego, ultimately, while being a kind of neat trick that allows us a much more novel existence - isn't a very important concept, in the grand scheme of things (of which I am only a tiny, tiny part, and the glory and magnitude of which I can only barely get a foggy and limited idea of during my most clear moments).
Intelligent Design people really piss me off because it seems so.. arrogant. "This perceptual Ego device is so fucking amazing, it must have been designed by something higher up, consciously!" Get over yourselves. Not only is it the logical end result of some millions of years of evolution, it's not even that neat a trick. The balls-in-cups trick is a pretty neat trick, too, is it evidence of a sentient creator who is himself separate from the rest of reality? The idea of a separate god is just another dualism, it's Ego's last trick on human society. The ego is amazingly adaptive in terms of the kind of misinformation it will generate to force people to continue to believe that ego actually exists in a separate and absolute sense, when in fact it does not. It's just an echo, a small microcosmic mirror of the universe at large.
This thinking seems to have a lot of parallels in traditional Eastern meditative concepts, but basically I think I just ate too much blotter in 11th grade. All part of the Cosmic Joke!"
"I've spent the last decade trying to sort through the garbled information I discovered locked in my head from a bunch of high doses, and this thread is as close as I can come. Either this is all fundamentally true, or I have succeeded brilliantly in creating a delusion that I can fully subscribe to (which would itself then just be another manifestation of the Cosmic Joke...)
The idea that my body is a separate physical structure from the rest of the universe that it exists in, is a delusion that my ego forces on me because my ego only exists inside the constructs of my own head, and so ego forces me to perceive a dualism (self vs other, self vs rest of the universe) which is convenient for day to day existence, but is not real. The idea that “I” am separate from the rest of reality is a lie that “I” make up so that “I” can exist. In ‘reality’, there is no separation, every molecule in my body is part of the mass chemical reaction swirling around me that science calls “the universe”. This swirling reaction is not formless, it has shapes and it has different configurations which blend seamlessly into one another (and we call the transition ‘time passing’, but again in some ways this is illusion) - and the swirling reaction has energy, in fact, it is, literally, the vibration of energy in motion.
I call this sum mass of energy in the universe God - and again, the idea that I am separate from God is an illusion that my ego plays on my intellect. I am not a separate entity from everything else. I am just another vantage point through which the universe can observe and appreciate itself. We’re all god’s children, because we’re all the moment to moment physical manifestation of God in the most literal sense.
It’s taken me several years to wrap my mind around this concept and decide I believe it, but I do, and it’s given me a great deal of comfort in terms of my fear of death. “I” fear death, because death is the end of ego, but then really it is only ego which fears death, and I have come to understand that even though ego, the thing I call I, has a huge grip on my life and creates my stream of consciousness - it is not, really ‘me’. Ego is an illusion that the brain subscribes to moment by moment, but when death comes and ego lets go - well, “I” end, but that doesn’t really mean that the energy that is me ends. I only have this energy in a borrowed sense; it’s not “mine”, it’s just what I’m using to think and feel with right now. When the time comes for ego to let go, that energy does not just turn into dust, it’s released and becomes part of new forms, new ways for the universe to understand and appreciate itself. Even the concept of “appreciation” requires a ‘conscious’ illusion.
I'm not arguing that Ego continues after physical death - I'm arguing that it doesn't matter that it doesn't, because the ego itself is the only thing I have which has the (delusional) facilities to fear death. And that ego, ultimately, while being a kind of neat trick that allows us a much more novel existence - isn't a very important concept, in the grand scheme of things (of which I am only a tiny, tiny part, and the glory and magnitude of which I can only barely get a foggy and limited idea of during my most clear moments).
Intelligent Design people really piss me off because it seems so.. arrogant. "This perceptual Ego device is so fucking amazing, it must have been designed by something higher up, consciously!" Get over yourselves. Not only is it the logical end result of some millions of years of evolution, it's not even that neat a trick. The balls-in-cups trick is a pretty neat trick, too, is it evidence of a sentient creator who is himself separate from the rest of reality? The idea of a separate god is just another dualism, it's Ego's last trick on human society. The ego is amazingly adaptive in terms of the kind of misinformation it will generate to force people to continue to believe that ego actually exists in a separate and absolute sense, when in fact it does not. It's just an echo, a small microcosmic mirror of the universe at large.
This thinking seems to have a lot of parallels in traditional Eastern meditative concepts, but basically I think I just ate too much blotter in 11th grade. All part of the Cosmic Joke!"