Ok, fair enough. But I had to jump into this conversation somehow.
Yes. You might even say that the human part of us is seeking whatever evolution designed us to seek: food, shelter, love, and maybe even knowledge and meaning. But the god part of us is just that part that is an extension of the universe itself. What drives that part of us to seek is the laws of nature themselves. And as a pantheist, I believe the laws of nature are what drive the universe (and all parts therein) to continue experiencing.
I anticipate your response.
I hear what you’re saying, but I think truth is just whatever we make up. I think the deeper into the mind the student goes, the closer he comes to his own truth (or that of the master if he’s just a intellectual receptical). But you did say “metaphorically speaking,” didn’t you? There is a “metaphorical” truth that can only be heard in silence.
There’s many ways to conceive of the self. I always like to bring things back to basics. I always ask: what is the self to the average Joe? And I think: it’s whoever Joe sees when he looks in the mirror. This reminds me that there is always an intricately connected physical aspect to the self, the body. If someone says, “Who did this?” and you say, “It was me,” you point to yourself–that is, you reference your body.
You say that the big Self is one’s essence. And this works with the self-qua-body (though maybe not in the way you intend). Essences are typically projections of our concepts of things. The essence of my coffee mug is given to my coffee mug from my projecting the concept of my coffee mug from my mind. I see it, I recognize it as “my coffee mug”–that is, I project my concept of it onto my visual image of it. The process is no different for Joe looking at his reflection in the mirror. He projects his concept of “himself” onto the image of himself that he sees. This, for him, becomes his essence.
I think the revealing of the big Self underneath the small self comes from our ability (more easily exersized by some than others) to push aside all the peripheral aspects of our self-concept (that my name is Joe, that I am a construction worker, that I am a father, etc.) and still recognize a ‘self’ when we look in the mirror–that is, that despite how we do away with all the peripheral aspects of ourselves, we still can’t help but to recognize a “person” there, even if it’s just a blank canvas.
I’m even skeptical that the big Self exists (at least in term of how I’m interpreting you); I’m used to thinking of everything as projections of experience. Whatever this constant that holds sway throughout the flux of experience, I think at best it recurs than actually holds sway. As a concept, it can’t just remain in the mind at all times. Therefore, as a projection of experience (a concept in this case), it recurs rather than just stays constant through time. Every time I think about myself, the same concept comes to mind, the same name. It’s the same way that matter seems to persist through time. A rock, for example, seems to be a constant, but it is really a network of billions of atoms all going through flux–the electrons buzzing around the nucleus, and the protons and neutrons in the nucleus themselves fluctuating as waves–but maintained in a system that repeats and reinforces its prior states–recurrence–and the overall effect on a macroscopic level is a virtual constant, a rock.
Well, I think this again has to do with the body. Attributing a cause to an effect usually involves identifying an object which caused the effect. Because of the body’s intricate connection to our concept of self, we easily find an object to call the “actor” or “feeler” or “thinker”–the cause of the acting, feeling, or thinking.
I suppose, but again, I think we identify Jack and Jill with their bodies (at least partially).
This is true. To express a thought or a feeling, we must say “I think…” or “I feel…” The dread of our self-concept fading away is an interesting topic that one might want to bring up with someone like iambiguous (or not want to if you’ve had the experience ).
This would be a new concept of ‘self’ from what I’ve been talking about. Since I don’t know it that well, I wonder whether it can even be called a self. I mean, I can imagine just having experience–a state in which there is no projection of self of any kind, just whatever’s there in the moment–are we calling pure experience a form of ‘self’?
Well, that’s sort of what I was getting at, except that to call this a ‘self’ seems more like a need to hang onto a label than anything else; but really, I would think all that exists is just whatever’s being experienced in that flow. Unless we actually start thinking about the self during the flow of experience, I think there would just be ‘stuff’ (i.e. whatever’s being experienced).
I’d be really disappointed if the path to enlightenment was limited only to meditation for long periods of time. I know what you mean, though. In my past attempts at meditation, I started with 15 minutes. Then it got reduced to 10 minutes. Then 5. I reeeally can’t focus that long. I’ve got ADD (or so they say). That’s why someone wrote a book about meditation for the ADD mind (I forget the title).
It’s what we’re born with. It’s how we’ve survived. Though the devoted Buddhist might ask: what’s wrong with death?