Are you the body?
The first and toughest block on the path to liberation is the body. From the moment of birth, everything in the body is designed to establish itself as a separate, successful and protected unit. This is of course a throwback from the days as hunter gatherer when we neded protection against predators. Animals are gone but the threat is still encoded. We act 24/7 as the body with a name, owner of stuff, related to other bodies with a vague feeling that there is more.
Is there any direct evidence to support that you are the body? First, is there such a thing as a body? Well, there is flesh, there are bones, there is blood, there are limbs, there are glands, all conceptualized into a label called the body. Even the components are labels attached to cells, tissues and further down into molecules and atoms and so on.
There is another organ called the brain which receives inputs from five senses in form of electrical signals translating into images of vision, taste, smell etc. What makes the taste your taste and your palet? Look carefully and you will find just a signal and an idea rushing into calling it your taste. Stub your toe and first there is a signal which quickly become my hurt toe. Light signals become my vision by a complex software riding on your mental hardware which it labels as mind. First there are sensations and then there is ownership claim.
All sensations and thoughts exist already in a very quantum mechanical probabaility way. Certain signals from one of the five detectors prompts the mind to label it red or painful and then attach a tag of mine. Paul Hederman calls it selfing.
In reality there is no body just an idea claimed by an imaginary algorithm called the self created by the brain and mind.
It gets worse. Not only we walk around, thinking erroenously that we are the body but often we say this is my body. Now here we are really sending confusing and paradoxical messages to our mind, we are the body which owns a body. No wonder much our life is upside down.
Let's see if there is any reason to believe we own a body. The body which is a bunch of chemicals grew from a couple of complex molecules from our parents fed by natural stuff that came from earth, wind and sun. Did you actually do anything to acquire this body that you claim to be yours?
Hmmmmm !
Is there any direct evidence to support that you are the body? First, is there such a thing as a body? Well, there is flesh, there are bones, there is blood, there are limbs, there are glands, all conceptualized into a label called the body. Even the components are labels attached to cells, tissues and further down into molecules and atoms and so on.
There is another organ called the brain which receives inputs from five senses in form of electrical signals translating into images of vision, taste, smell etc. What makes the taste your taste and your palet? Look carefully and you will find just a signal and an idea rushing into calling it your taste. Stub your toe and first there is a signal which quickly become my hurt toe. Light signals become my vision by a complex software riding on your mental hardware which it labels as mind. First there are sensations and then there is ownership claim.
All sensations and thoughts exist already in a very quantum mechanical probabaility way. Certain signals from one of the five detectors prompts the mind to label it red or painful and then attach a tag of mine. Paul Hederman calls it selfing.
In reality there is no body just an idea claimed by an imaginary algorithm called the self created by the brain and mind.
It gets worse. Not only we walk around, thinking erroenously that we are the body but often we say this is my body. Now here we are really sending confusing and paradoxical messages to our mind, we are the body which owns a body. No wonder much our life is upside down.
Let's see if there is any reason to believe we own a body. The body which is a bunch of chemicals grew from a couple of complex molecules from our parents fed by natural stuff that came from earth, wind and sun. Did you actually do anything to acquire this body that you claim to be yours?
Hmmmmm !
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