We Are All One (Consciousness)

CaptainShiny you are a legend, your response was really thought provoking, I've enjoyed mulling over in the last day or so. Lets get down to it. "the leaves on a tree are not the same as the seed from which the tree sprouted both physically and chronologically, even if they are, holistically, the same tree" I see where your coming from, but I have to disagree. With this reasoning you would not be the same person as we were when we were young. Much like the seed, you started as s sperm and have changed, grown and become a different physicality from when you were a baby or the glint in your fathers eye. Holistically the same, but at a cellular level you are different. We know that cells are not created from nothing, so you are not new cells, or a new person, you are your old cells that have just divided then multiplied as time moved forward. Your original cells may all be dead now but splitting and multiplying over time keeps the connection in tact. In this way everything is linked to it's predecessor. The same happens in the seen and tree example. Interestingly if a tree is broken up into small parts there will be nothing about the tree that can be called 'tree'. It would just be 'leaf' 'bark' 'root' 'branch' and so on. These holistic labels we use are counter productive in scheme of 'oneness' that I'm talking about, but are valuable in letting us make sense of our human experience and can be used in explanation. If we use this example of cutting the tree into small parts, but replace the tree with our bodies we come to the same conclusion, that there is no part of us that we can call 'I' Descartes said "I think,"therefore I am". Personally I feel that if I were cut into small parts (without dying) this is fact, there would be still some small part of me that thinks. If it's physical or not, can't be known but this thinking part, this conscious part, I would call 'I'. Through meditations, drugs, transcendence or such technique we can separate ourselves from ego and identity (accumulated memory's of self) and are left with what? A stripped down version of 'I' that no longer necessitates a body, or identity. Ok, so if everyone did this you could still argue that it's not the 'oneness' that I am arguing, you could say that what's left is individual stripped down versions of consciousness, one for every person. This is where it get's interesting and this is where my argument is. If this bodiless, egoless self is non physical, then trying to explain it's existence could be like trying to explain a 3rd dimension to a 2 dimensional being, of trying to contemplate the infinite or that existence that is timeless. It seems like a losing battle. However, I believe we have examples of no physical being in our world and you brought one up in an example. Dreams. A highly debated mystery that we take for granted but everyone of us has had them. We can't deny their reality but can agree that they are non-physical reality. Something that happens in our minds eye so to speak. This relates back to my original argument 'We are all one (consciousness)' simply because our universe and experience is physical but from dreams and consciousness/awareness we see there can also be a nonphysical. 'Matter' and 'non-matter'. Our tools of perception and or experience are based in the world of matter so our observations of non-matter is limited, but can be glimpsed in dreams or cutting through self and experiencing consciousness/awareness. So.. we have 'matter' and 'non-matter'. 'Matter' is things and things have space, labels and substance, 'non-matter' will be the opposite of this and so will be formless, timeless, non divided (one). The fact that we can look into our mind space and glimpse this 'non-matter' (even though we don't understand it) and this non matter being singular and non divided makes me think that we are all connected consciously at base level. Only being able to glimpse it also makes sense, because if it's a non-thing when we perceive it with our human experience tool of matter, we assimilate references of our material reality to it and paradoxically snub out the experience. This connected oneness can't feel like you and I are the same because that would imply that we are still divided by memory of experience. A true experience of oneness should be an experience of detachment from physicality (like in dreams), it would be a feeling of base level connectedness not so much shared experience (even though the divisions of experience are experiencing things differently.. i.e. me typing from my computer, you typing from yours). This last paragraph is difficult to write let alone comprehend but because we are connected but disconnected, think of it like a tree again. The upper most branches on the left and right side of a tree are disconnected from each other, they have leaves that are not leaves on the opposite side of the tree, but come from the same roots. If a leaf on each side of a tree had consciousness and those consciousnesses traveled down through the branches, back the trunk, then down the trunk to the roots, the leaves would no longer conciser themselves leaves but would be able to understand that they are the same tree. This is what I'm getting at when I say that 'We are all one (consciousness) "............ I tried to get in answers to you questions but will write them below for clarity also ""If a consciousness is the sum of one's memories, then it's impossible that it's shared" I agree If consciousness is simply awareness, then that raises further questions. What are the bounds of awareness? I'm just trying to use our human experience as our test dummy, because it's all we have to work with. This is why I brought meditations, drugs, life death experiences, dreams and things that can be observed (even if not entirely understood) into the equation. If it's something that occurs perpetually in the moment, then what happens when you sleep? Or blink? Sleep.. this could be a key to understanding emptiness and no physicality Blinking, our sense of sight is temporarily blocked by a small sheet of skin :) Or lose your train of thought? Thoughts are part of our mind but I wouldn't conciser them base level consciousness, there is obvious observable division. How can a consciousness be universal if we can't even figure out when consciousness is present? We can define conscious experience by thinking of 'unconsciousness' . I.e a boxer was knocked unconscious.The opposite of that is conscious but yes I agree this is tricky and the line is blurred. I think in the main body I did a better definition than I can fit here. If, on the opposite hand, it is a universal, what causes the divide? The devision of cells, movement and expansion of physicality. If we are both one mind, why am I not you? Good point. I worked on clarifying this in the main body, you are correct, we can not be one mind (of memories and life experience) but at the core as explained above I feel we can still be connected and one . How do I know I'm not you? How do I know I'm a single me, rather than a collective of different mes that make up what I consider my conscious identity? I think you answered your own question here, you are an accumulation of your identity, your memories upbringing, conditioning and experience in your physical body, because of these differences in experience we are divided. --------------- Loving this debate so far CaptainShiny Again.. please cut my theory to pieces as much as you can Looking forward to your reply IAMCOFFEE