Are you the universe?

I see this line tossed around a lot and to me there just doesn’t seem to be evidence that we are nothing but a body. Yet does the law of conservation of matter factor into this?

We are stardust?

Are we stardust?

Short answer, literally,YES, I believe that is likely.

I find the TEDx video below fascinating.

 

" Are we the universe?"

No, I do not believe so. Lots of luck trying to prove that.

PLEASE read up on solipsism. Below is an introduction to a pretty good Wikipedia article.

 

“Solipsism (/ˈsɒlɪpsɪzəm/ ( listen); from Latin solus, meaning ‘alone’, and ipse, meaning ‘self’)[1] is the philosophical idea that only one’s own mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one’s own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist. This extreme position is claimed to be irrefutable, as the solipsist believes himself to be the only true authority, all others being creations of their own mind.”

 

 

 

It has nothing to do with Solipsism. I’m just trying to figure out what they mean by it. I mean some told me that before you there was the universe. When they tell me some spin about consciousness I try to tell them that the brain is the source of it, which is followed by “where did the brain come from” (and I stop there). It seems to be a variant of how far back you can go, which then leads to the “origin”.

This isn’t based on a “we are stardust thing either”.

Xain - people tell you this - as in the religious? Brain from evolutionary pathway. No?

which is followed by “where did the brain come from” (and I stop there).

Have you looked that up? Start with the Big Bang if you want, or bacteria, or wherever, but learn how the brain evolved. If someone asked you that question, and you didn’t have the answer, why would you “stop there”. In that conversation, it’s perfectly fine to say, “I don’t know”, but someone does know, and you can find out. You won’t find every answer to every question, but you’ll do a lot better than these morons who are asking this as if it means something that you don’t know.

I guess when I say “i don’t know” it usually means that they got me, or at least it appears that way to them. I’ll be honest, I haven’t read much about life beyond animal books, mostly because questions about the origin of he universe kind of bored me and didn’t seem relevant to my daily life. As a kid it didn’t matter “why” or “how” I am/got here, I was here. But now it seems like I need an answer for everything and I find other people believe some crazy things: like you are the universe, the world is an illusion, we are all one. But I see a trend in such claims in that they try to dissuade you from the “belief” that you die.

I guess when I say “i don’t know” it usually means that they got me
Bertrand Russell includes this in his rules for civility. There are too many things to know for everyone to know everything. If you are in a conversation and someone brings up something you hadn't thought of, that doesn't mean they are smarter than you. It doesn't mean they have the right answer. It means they brought up something you aren't aware of. In civil conversation, they should allow you to go look into it if you want. If they continue on, basing further conclusions on their version of what a brain is, and demanding that you accept their conclusions because they know and you don't, they are not being civil. Call them on their BS. You can do it nicely. You can just say, "huh, hadn't thought about that, I guess I should look into it. I'll get back to you. Let's do lunch."

Yeah. I have to stop taking “I don’t know” as some kind of defeat.

why dont you ask them to define “THE UNIVERSE”

Justin - a soul?? You serious?

Justin you were stricken with such grief for your dying relative you felt pain? That’s what you call a soul?

Seems a little too much pie in the sky, I was looking for more grounding in reason.

Yes the connection is hereditary. Yet nobody can explain what a soul is let alone show that they exist

I’m sorry to say that your personal experience isn’t proof of anything. You do need a reason to believe, otherwise it’s just faith.

My guess in the “you are the universe” might have to do with the law of the conservation of matter. This is likely since that the “creation ex nihilo” argument for the universe doesn’t seem to hold water, so the universe has always been and therefor there is no “Death” just the passing of form. It would be hard for me to argue that “you didn’t exist” because it would essentially violate the law of conservation of matter.

What it means?

Atoms are not discrete balls floating in space. They are more point-like excitations of a field. (Think of standing waves in a body of water.)

There are no discrete things or objects of solid substance; things as we perceive them are merely changing forms and patterns in nature (the universe) as a whole. You are not a small and lonely being lost in a foreign universe; you are a direct expression of the whole of the universe as it currently is; you (as everything else) is a brief movement in the dance of nature. You do not exist independent of the perceived outside; outside and inside are two sides of the same coin.

The seed is no different from the tree. They are the same thing viewed from different perspectives in time. Birth and death are really no different; waking life is really no different from dreamless sleep.

The nature of the human perspective is experience. This is why we say that we are the universe experiencing itself: A dark cloud is the universe clouding itself; the sun is the universe lighting itself; the rotating planet is the universe spinning itself.

The ocean waves; the planet rotates; the sun shines; the heart beats; the stomach digests; the brain thinks; the body acts. These events are no different in nature. The thinker of thoughts is the waver of oceans, not a little man behind the eyes of the body; the waver of the ocean is spontaneous, as is the thinker of thoughts. Nature is not being moved; nature flows without direction; nature is not concerened with tomorrow, for it is dancing today.

Look at a tree, see how it moves in the wind.

Notice your thoughts arising, even the thought “I am thinking.”

Notice that the movement of the tree and the movement of thought are two expressions of the same thing.

Stop labeling the tree and yourself; notice that all separation is a consequence of the labeling process; allow all boundaries to dissolve.

Feel the swaying of the tree as much as you feel the arising thoughts and the other bodily sensations.

Feel intuitively that what you refer to as I is a form in the universe experiencing itself.

If you understand this and it is not significant, than you have known it for a while now.

I think the aha moments mostly come from people raised to believe in predestination or our bodies being a “temple” kind of thinking. It can often be rather disturbing to those who haven’t before thought about the meaning, or lack there of, of sentient life among a universe filled with inanimate matter.

For me it was looking into my friends eyes and realizing that there really isn’t that big of a separation between me and him at the atomic level, we are just atoms rearranged to move through space unpredictably, and at our most deconstructed for we are no more than the minerals in the earth.

The shock comes from (for me) the realization that everything you have ever experienced, everything everyone has experienced, all the pain, anguish, love, and efforts we put into our lives is done and experienced by nothing more than a unique collections of particles, nothing more. It can bring about a certain fear, carelessness or comfort to one’s live when you understand that all human emotion is but a complex electric signal communication network between cells and that all conscious observers are really all the same being that split into two cells at the beginning of life. We share one consciousness with all other life forms. There is no self. The individual is an illusion. Death of the ego.

Xain - does the universe care about you??