[verisimi]

Here's a question for you. Imagine a child who was well looked after (fed and loved) but didn't go to school for 12+ years. Now imagine the same person who from the age of 5-6 followed the usual path of 12+ years of schooling. Which person do you imagine would be more fully themselves, the more complete expression of whatever was already inside? If the schooled person did a PhD too (so another 6 years) would that help or hinder them from becoming themselves?

To me, the answer is obvious. Inserting thousands of ideas and patterns of thoughts into a person will be unlikely to help them become a true expression of their nature. If you know gardening, the schooled person is more like a trained tree - grown in a way that suits the farmer - the more tied back the tree is, the less free it is.

As I see it, each individual is unique, with a soul. Each is capable of reaching a full expression of itself, by itself. What I also see is that there are many systems that are intentional manipulations, put in place in order to farm individuals at the individual's expense. The more education one receives, the more amenable one is to being 'farmed' according to the terms that were inserted. To me, this is the installation of an unnatural and servile mentality, which once adopted makes the person easy to harness - the person will even think being harnessed and 'in service' is right and good.

The problem is that these principles were not their own. These are like religious beliefs, and unlike principles founded according to personal experience. Received principles will always be unnatural. Acting according to them, is to act in an inauthentic way. However, there is no material reason to address the inauthenticity, as when one looks around, everyone else is doing the same. This results in a self-supporting, collective delusion.

In my view there are answers to what the self is - but 'society' cannot teach you them - it can only fill you with delusions. Imo, you would be on a better footing to forget everything you think you know (this costs you nothing) and do something like apply the scientific method personally - let your personal experiences guide you. Know the difference between 'knowing' because of experience and 'belief' because you were taught it. Even more simply, know thyself.

[Dilettante_]

My position is that we are nothing but our circumstances(I'm assuming that we're in agreement that genetics, pre-birth nutrition etc, are part of these circumstances and not of the 'soul' you're after?), or to put it more directly: We are our circumstances. Our Soul Is That. There is nothing that is "already inside".

The tree does not exist in isolation, separate from the patterns of rain and sunshine that shape its growth. "The separation is an illusion".

I have indeed been on the same path as you of trying to shed delusions and applying the scientific method, and have up to this point found no indication of any "causeless cause" to steer me besides the fundamental is-ness of the universe.

Put bluntly, I believe that if you hadn't started with the assumption of a soul, you would be entirely unable to arrive at the conclusion of a soul by rational methods. And starting by assuming the unproven instead of emptyness is epistemological cheating.

[verisimi]

> There is nothing that is "already inside".

Have you seen babies, or puppies? You would easily be able to confirm for yourself that creatures are born with distinct personalities. Its not just chemistry or nurture.

> "The separation is an illusion"

But you don't really think this. You don't really think you are a tree. You do think you are distinct.

[Dilettante_]

>You would easily be able to confirm for yourself that creatures are born with distinct personalities

Refer to my previous post: "I'm assuming that we're in agreement that genetics, pre-birth nutrition etc, are part of these circumstances and not of the 'soul' you're after?"

That's not some mysterious transcendant soul, that's genetics. Literally the exact same thing as a computer program. Dog breeds are specifically bred(programmed) to exhibit certain character traits, for example.

>You don't really think you are a tree. You do think you are distinct.

You missed the point of the argument. Just as the tree is not separate from its circumstances, neither am I.

You brought up "know thyself" so I assumed we were pulling from a similar corpus and brought up "the illusion of separation" as a mutually familiar point that didn't need much elaboration, sorry about that.

Also, it's not so much that I "think" I am distinct, more that I "believe" it, to put it in the terms you used earlier. I am conditioned to consider certain things "me" and others not.

Really I am no more distinct from the tree than, say, my fingernail is distinct from my nosebone. They belong to the same Individual.

[verisimi]

> Dog breeds are specifically bred(programmed) to exhibit certain character traits, for example.

And yet all dogs have their own unique characters, no? They are not the same individual, right?

> You brought up "know thyself" so I assumed we were pulling from a similar corpus and brought up "the illusion of separation" as a mutually familiar point that didn't need much elaboration, sorry about that.

I don't know what corpus you refer to. Please explain if you like. I'm not basing what I'm saying on a corpus - of course I've read books, but I am giving you my personal view on things.

> Also, it's not so much that I "think" I am distinct, more that I "believe" it, to put it in the terms you used earlier. I am conditioned to consider certain things "me" and others not.

I have heard this sort of (nondual) thinking before and completely dispute it. I personally cannot access anyone else's mind or body, I haven't no idea what you are thinking. I can only pretend to be doing this. There is a self, we live it continuously. There are times when we are fully present, where we are so in the immediate experience, that we can move out of linguistic/common concepts perhaps, but this is still within oneself.

For me, it is more that each person is a world in their own right, rather than "us" all being in the same universe. We simply do not have the level of interconnectivity you believe is there, when you say you are the tree or me. Furthermore, it really is very hard to see the point you are making when we have a disagreement - plainly there is a distinction.

[Dilettante_]

You're either outright refusing or unable to see the point I've been making about the breeds: The traits are physically programmed in, whether individual or familial, not "already inside" the individual's soul. You aren't tracking that part of our conversation properly.

On the "corpus" point: It's not about not "giving my personal view", it's about drawing from a shared lexicon, of terminology, of lenses through which to view and analyze That Which We Are Talking About. My "home" in this respect is mostly in Hindu Yoga, (Zen) Buddhism and Daoism. You will find in those corpus-es(corpi?) essentially the exact conversation we're having right now, and find addressed the questions you have, in a wonderful plethora of different ways. Any other religion's mystic branch, or western occultism or alchemy similarly. If you want a specific recommendation for an entry-point, I could recommend giving the Bhagavad Gita a shot and seeing if you "vibe" with the way it explains things. If you skip the (usually) included commentary and only read the core translation, it ought to be a fairly quick read.

The nonduality point: Your body cannot access others' experience any more than my fingernail can access that of my nosebone, sure. But again, that does not mean they aren't part of the same organism. The fingernail and the nosebone do not make independent choices, the choice is made for them by the meta-organism(my body). Similarly, the argumentation might go, the tree and I do not make independent choices, but are governed by the same meta-organism(Nature, if you will, or perhaps "The Universe", but I suspect that term will turn you off since it might evoke the image of new-age-hippy woowoo).

I'm saying that if you insist that the body/mind/whatever you currently refer to as "you" is your "Self", you are taking "the fingernail" to be your Self instead of "the whole person". "Plainly there is a distinction", yes. But at the same time, there is also an underlying interconnectivity.

>Furthermore, it really is very hard to see the point you are making when we have a disagreement

That is perhaps the wisest thing either of us is going to say in this conversation. This format does not serve high-effort posting very well, I know I'm not doing the best I could be.

Perhaps we'd shelve this discussion for now? If you care to continue more deeply, you could shoot me an email at any point in the future(see my profile), and I again heartily recommend the Bhagavad Gita. Or perhaps, if you're more rational-thinking oriented, you might enjoy(the even shorter) Yogasutras of Patanjali. Or have you checked out Yudkowski's "Sequences"[1]? That one's completely down-to-eath, no spiritual terminology or metaphors (or non-dualism I'm pretty sure!), and covers a lot of the same ground my eastern background does.

[1]https://www.readthesequences.com/

[verisimi]

> You're either outright refusing or unable to see the point I've been making about the breeds: The traits are physically programmed in, whether individual or familial, not "already inside" the individual's soul. You aren't tracking that part of our conversation properly.

I don't dispute traits. But the traits idea fails to address the unique characteristics of each dog.

It seems I'm not tracking the things you want me to track, terminology, science, traits. But then, as I said in the first place:

> For me 'intelligence' would be knowing why you are doing what you are doing without dismissing the question with reference to 'convention', 'consensus', someone/something else.

I can tell you are sincere with your investigations, but I can't help wondering whether direct observations of reality, the development of a personal outlook on reality, use personal experience as primary source, is ultimately more valuable than familiarity with a corpus. But then I would say that. And you would disagree.