Julie Gebrosky wrote: ↑February 9th, 2023, 11:38 pm
As others have said, your life in this body on Earth is temporary. Does that mean this is not real?
Yes, I believe the idea of continuous personal identity, starting from human birth/conception or such and going to the moment a doctor declares human death, is an illusion. The idea that there is you that is linked to one human body
over time throughout that body's life
in time but not another is an illusion, hence why the book refers to it as
the unreal you and by extension
the unreal me. I elaborate on that point and matter in much more detail in my other post,
Commentary on self-transcendence, ego death, and dying before you die; with a finger snap more brutal than Thanos.
Julie Gebrosky wrote: ↑February 9th, 2023, 11:38 pm
The car you drive won’t work forever. One day it will be scrapped and turned into something else. It’s still real in its car form.
Is it? We must distinguish between form and essence.
Can you provide a precise definition of the phrase "the car you drive"?
It seems like that itself might be a construct or conceptualization rather than something fundamentally real.
Initially, I'm reminded of the the
Ship of Theseus thought experiment. I'm also reminded of Plato's idea of an eternal world of ideas or ideals, such that Plato might argue that in the eternal timeless Platonic realm of ideas the perfect idea of "the car you drive" and "the ship of Theseus" really exist, even though the proverbial shadows on the cave wall are just illusions.
Those kind of ideas can get us into the weeds of philosophy, which I do enjoy going into.
Nonetheless, I prefer the approach of poets, such as Poe who describes this world of dancing forms (including the humans and cars) as a "dream within a dream":
Edgar Allan Poe wrote:Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow —
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.
I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand —
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep — while I weep!
O God! Can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
Time does not really exist. It is a symptom of the conceptualization and modeling of reality into a dream-like VR world.
If you look around in the dreamy VR-world for examples of time, and things happening in time and over time, then you will see them.
Does Mario really save the Princess? Maybe so, maybe not, but either it's a relative reality. It's true within the dream or VR-world, relative to reality that itself isn't real.
Does that which we call a 'car' that this avatar we call 'Scott' drives in the dreamy VR-world made up by our brains exist for more than 30 years or less 30 years? I may be able to answer it, just as I can Does Mario really save the Princess?
The logic is simple though: If time is not real, then--
really--there is nothing temporary. Any sentence or question of the structure, "when XYZ happens to ABC..." has already presumed a time existing, and thus must logically either be taken as a loaded question that is loaded with the falsehood of time, or simply question a that is asked relatively in relation to a VR-world, like asking if Santa Claus is jolly or if Mario saves the princess.
Incidentally, I'm reminding of a short piece I wrote about reality vs non-reality,
Big Foot the Bully.
Simply put, I don't think humans are real, nor is anything they do. For example, humans are born and humans die. But I don't believe that I, in terms of what the book calls t
he real me, was ever born. Likewise, I don't think you, the real you, was ever born and will ever die. That's because the real you is real, and I believe nothing real is temporary. If you are real, you are eternal.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.