Philosophy Now Forum

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 2:48 amWhy do apparently intelligent people express such denial with negativity?

If it doesn’t fit you musta quit.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 7:37 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 4:41 pm The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, by Hemingway, shows the eternal value of power fearlessly facing power and the implications, without naming a tidy label.

How is the instinctive reaction creating the effect of power vs power an eternal value rather than just an indication of the eternal value of the conscious struggle for evolution?

Life is the eternal value against which all else is valued.

This is why a kingdom can be worth a horse.

The conscious struggle is for life, and life results in choiceless evolution.

No struggle for the cat, and no struggle for the man in the Cheetah video to become invisible to the cat.

What was that? Supernatural?

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 8:42 pm There are no higher and lower parts of our being, that's all made up. There are no two levels of reality and there is no white horse and black horse.
That's not an actual contradiction you presented, since you made up the contradicting elements in the first place.

So if there are no higher or lower parts of our being except what we make up, then what are we supposed to be? what is it to be a human being?

If there isn't two levels of reality, if that is just a contradiction made up, then what is reality for human being, are humans just a more evolved species of ape ?

Atla wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 8:42 pmOk maybe it wasn't a nervous breakdown. There are several ways how people can arrive at such split minds where they start to believe/experience two realities. Sometimes they are born that way, sometimes religion/philosophy leads them there, sometimes it's a nervous breakdown or some mental disorder etc. etc.

What do you mean that people believe and experience two realities. You mention these things as if you already know what this condition is, has it been your experience to have a split mind, or is it just a belief that you read somewhere, or someone you know had this condition. Can you tell us more about the condition of split mind ..what it means to you and why you think people are born like it...why would someone be born with a belief that they are experiencing two realities?

And who is qualified to judge the human condition as being somehow defective just because they choose to think a bit differently. It is true that because they want to think differently it's because they have some sort of mental disorder, as if there was something wrong with that person....mental disorders are a stigma in that they are often perceived as being a sickness or some kind of malfunctioning of the mind, like it's a disease to think differently. How do we know what is a normal way to think, when we have no access to another persons thoughts, feelings, or how they choose to perceive the world in which they live.

Would appreciate your feedback.

I'm not going to argue with you anymore Atla, I just want to get on board with you and your ideas in a civilised manor. I have no grudge against any human being, we're all doing the very best we can do with what we've got for a life, we are in no position to judge anyone or know what they are thinking until we've walked a mile in their shoes.

Will you forgive and forget all the outrageous manic outbursts of the past and be willing to move forward with me so we can at least try to approach each other on a more mutually understanding level?

I apologise to you in earnest and genuine sincerity of any wrongful and misleading things I have spread here at the forum, I will endeavor to refrain from my overuse of babble and nonsense from now on, and attempt to speak in a way that is understandable to the common person. I know I've been a pain in the ..but I want to reform my ways, will you believe me when I say I want to reform and become a human again?

And that message is for anyone else reading and posting here. I will respond to everyone on a human level, not on that silly meta nondual level that I have been accustomed which just seems to confuse everyone to the point where they have no idea what I am talking about.


PS..I am very aware what an idiot I've been, I'm being very honest and genuine now, yes, I've been an idiot. I do know myself, I know how I must be perceived to others, they have every right to respond to me the way they do, I deserve everything I get. I take full responsibility for every thing I've ever said here.


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Walker wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:53 am Life is the eternal value against which all else is valued.

This is why a kingdom can be worth a horse.

The conscious struggle is for life, and life results in choiceless evolution.

No struggle for the cat, and no struggle for the man in the Cheetah video to become invisible to the cat.

What was that? Supernatural?

Do you mean that life is an eternal value because life likes living, it loves to live, and longs to live...and because of this passion to live, it fears the end of that living when death beckons.

Is that love for life the eternal value you speak of..or what?

Is it an eternal value to have no struggle for life? ..to know that it is good in every moment, even in the face of evil?

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Dontaskme wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:07 am Would appreciate your feedback.

It's important to note that I'm not talking about schizophrenia here, and I'm also not talking about literally disconnected hemispheres. I'm also not talking about multiple personalities. Those are different things.

But some people simply have splits in their cognition. Even though they have one consciousness, it's made up of two or more loosely connected fragments. Sometimes the split is more surface level, induced by philosophy/religion for example. Sometimes the split is more like determined by how their brain was shaped, some people can be born that way. (Yes I have some personal experience, have also seen it in other people, and also read about psychology a lot.)

As far as I can tell, some splits are for example: split between the evolved neocortex part and the ancient reptilian part; split between the concrete and the abstract; between the left and right hemisphere; between thinking and feeling; between the intuition and between the visuals and so on.

So some people actually experience, or think they experience, 2 or more realities at the same time. But those are completely different windows on the same one reality. Their brain/mind, in their head, is fragmented.

Unifying the fragments can be a painful but important process, and should probably be done with the help of a professional. I think it's usually possible. I can't really help with it further and I don't think this belongs on this forum either.

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As for what humans really are, why we are really here now, this self-aware species, capable of udnerstanding and pondering existence.. no one could really figure it out yet. (I've come up with a unified theory, but will never publish it.)

But yeah we are more than just "talking apes". Existence seems to be "centered" on us for some reason.

But we seem to be left to our own devices, so trusting eternal values doesn't seem work, we have to come up with and agree upon good values ourselves, if we can.

Atla wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:27 am

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 9:07 am Would appreciate your feedback.

It's important to note that I'm not talking about schizophrenia here, and I'm also not talking about literally disconnected hemispheres. I'm also not talking about multiple personalities. Those are different things.

But some people simply have splits in their cognition. Even though they have one consciousness, it's made up of two or more loosely connected fragments. Sometimes the split is more surface level, induced by philosophy/religion for example. Sometimes the split is more like determined by how their brain was shaped, some people can be born that way. (Yes I have some personal experience, have also seen it in other people, and also read about psychology a lot.)

As far as I can tell, some splits are for example: split between the evolved neocortex part and the ancient reptilian part; split between the concrete and the abstract; between the left and right hemisphere; between thinking and feeling; between the intuition and between the visuals and so on.

So some people actually experience, or think they experience, 2 or more realities at the same time. But those are completely different windows on the same one reality. Their brain/mind, in their head, is fragmented.

Unifying the fragments can be a painful but important process, and should probably be done with the help of a professional. I think it's usually possible. I can't really help with it further and I don't think this belongs on this forum either.

Okay well thanks for the feedback, at least I know what you mean now - insofar as I agree with the knowledge you have provided. This knowledge must have come from someone's own personal experience of it, for how else can anything be known about the human condition. This means that we have to believe what other people are feeling and thinking, we have no choice but to believe they are telling the truth about their own experience.

We cannot deny another persons experience of their self as being all made up, and all in their head or not a real condition since it is real for them, it's their pure experience, even though they have no way of proving their experience to another, and vice versa, we cannot prove they are not having their experience. I know I'm stating the obvious here. But this is why I believe we all create our own realities, and that nothing in that individual frame of reference can be proven to be false by another. We simply cannot know another person's mind, we have no option other than to believe what they tell us is the truth.

There's just no way to know anything outside our own being experience, to think we can know another person is to project what we know, not what they know. We all project because we absolutely are sure we are alive and conscious, so we assume others are as well, but we have no concrete proof of how another being thinks or feels, so in essence, all knowing has to come from our own self, this is what I call intuition. It's what we feel, what we experience for our self that matters, it's how we feel in our gut, and not to be influenced by what other people would rather us to feel or experience or think.

Also, I don't think medical practitioners have any real clue as to how the human mind and body works, they are like car mechanics, they know the basic machinery of the bodies functioning, but have no real clue of what I call alien ailments that are very difficult to explain or pin down to what's actually causing them. The symptoms are easily treated with pills, but pills are masks, not cures, we have yet to know how to cure ourselves because nature seems to have a mind of it's own, it's full of surprises that's for sure.

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Atla wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:27 am
As for what humans really are, why we are really here now, this self-aware species, capable of udnerstanding and pondering existence.. no one could really figure it out yet. (I've come up with a unified theory, but will never publish it.)

But yeah we are more than just "talking apes". Existence seems to be "centered" on us for some reason.

But we seem to be left to our own devices, so trusting eternal values doesn't seem work, we have to come up with and agree upon good values ourselves, if we can.

I just don't get why we appear to be different to all the other species of life on the planet.

Why us, why do we get to be self aware, and able to fly rockets to the moon, and mars one day.

Why do we get to eat amazing foods and travel to every corner of the earth, why do we get to experience emotion of love and joy etc..why are we so creative, in art and music and dance, and acting. I don't get it, sorry, I'm ranting on about it. I guess we'll never know why, because every time we ponder the mystery of our being, there's never any answer, the silence of space never talks back to us.

Yes it seems we are left to our own devices, it seems we are free to do what we want, including blowing ourselves up in a nuclear explosion.

Why do we have all this diversity to our life...whereas other animals are just stuck in like one kind of experience in that they have very limited stimulation and are confined to just one area for their entire life. And yet when you witness the life of your cat, it never seems to get bored with doing the same thing day in day out, eating the same food day in day out, it can't complain even if it wanted to...it's the same with all wild animals, they also live pointless existences.


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Sometimes I wonder what's the point to any life at all, why even bother...this can be another thread topic actually, why bother to live at all, anyway, you don't have to reply to this post if you don't want. I'm just blabbering on like I always do, I am retired now, so I've got all day to ponder the why's and what's and if's and but's...of life and living, etc.



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Walker wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 6:53 am

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 7:37 pm

Walker wrote: ↑Sat Mar 31, 2018 4:41 pm The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber, by Hemingway, shows the eternal value of power fearlessly facing power and the implications, without naming a tidy label.

How is the instinctive reaction creating the effect of power vs power an eternal value rather than just an indication of the eternal value of the conscious struggle for evolution?

Life is the eternal value against which all else is valued.

This is why a kingdom can be worth a horse.

The conscious struggle is for life, and life results in choiceless evolution.

No struggle for the cat, and no struggle for the man in the Cheetah video to become invisible to the cat.

What was that? Supernatural?

Organic life on earth is a living machine. Its variety are expressions of a form existing within a higher level of reality. The value of a machine is its function. The function of organic life on earth is limited to the earth so cannot be said to be an eternal value. The struggle for survival isn't an eternal value. The eternal value of life as a whole within our universe is defined by its relationship to its Source of its origin. The closer to the source, the greater its eternal value.

Supernatural refers to what takes place above Plato's divided line. We can observe what takes place below the level of the sun and call it natural. What takes place above the line is beyond our sensory perception so we call it supernatural.

Dontaskme wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 12:14 pm

Atla wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:27 am
As for what humans really are, why we are really here now, this self-aware species, capable of udnerstanding and pondering existence.. no one could really figure it out yet. (I've come up with a unified theory, but will never publish it.)

But yeah we are more than just "talking apes". Existence seems to be "centered" on us for some reason.

But we seem to be left to our own devices, so trusting eternal values doesn't seem work, we have to come up with and agree upon good values ourselves, if we can.

I just don't get why we appear to be different to all the other species of life on the planet.

Why us, why do we get to be self aware, and able to fly rockets to the moon, and mars one day.

Why do we get to eat amazing foods and travel to every corner of the earth, why do we get to experience emotion of love and joy etc..why are we so creative, in art and music and dance, and acting. I don't get it, sorry, I'm ranting on about it. I guess we'll never know why, because every time we ponder the mystery of our being, there's never any answer, the silence of space never talks back to us.

Yes it seems we are left to our own devices, it seems we are free to do what we want, including blowing ourselves up in a nuclear explosion.

Why do we have all this diversity to our life...whereas other animals are just stuck in like one kind of experience in that they have very limited stimulation and are confined to just one area for their entire life. And yet when you witness the life of your cat, it never seems to get bored with doing the same thing day in day out, eating the same food day in day out, it can't complain even if it wanted to...it's the same with all wild animals, they also live pointless existences.


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Sometimes I wonder what's the point to any life at all, why even bother...this can be another thread topic actually, why bother to live at all, anyway, you don't have to reply to this post if you don't want. I'm just blabbering on like I always do, I am retired now, so I've got all day to ponder the why's and what's and if's and but's...of life and living, etc.



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Consider the lilies. When I read your post I thought of this biblical passage:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=DRA

The human condition that puts us into opposition with ourselves has made it so that the lilies are greater than Solomon.

You also gave me the impression that you believe the universe serves us. What if objective human purpose is to serve the universe? Then why we should bother becomes obvious.

Atla wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 10:27 am
But we seem to be left to our own devices, so trusting eternal values doesn't seem work, we have to come up with and agree upon good values ourselves, if we can.

I agree that we agree upon certain values in order to create harmonious balanced working societies. But where do you think those values come from besides thoughts about values? where do thoughts actually originate from..are they not inherited, as in not original to us as an individual, but rather borrowed so to speak. We believe they belong to us, but all we've done is taken on other peoples thoughts that existed prior to us and claimed them as our own.

But who had the very first thought is what we should be looking at, where did that first thought come from.

They can't be ours because we'd all be trading our own values with the values of others that are not in alignment with our own frequency vibe. That would hardly work.

Also, our capacity to think can't belong to us , we didn't make our brain, neither can we invent our own thoughts to be of a specific quality. If we could, surely we'd invite the feel good thoughts in only and stop negative thinking once and for all. Perhaps we are served the thought we deserve that we need in order to grow and evolve.

Why is the word eternal a sticky subject to you? what does eternal mean to you?

Do you not agree with Joseph Campbell's video about eternal being now, the only time there is?

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Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:09 pm
Supernatural refers to what takes place above Plato's divided line. We can observe what takes place below the level of the sun and call it natural. What takes place above the line is beyond our sensory perception so we call it supernatural.

Sensory perception is required to determine if something now is beyond the range of past experience, or is impossible.

To know that something is taking place beyond our sensory perception requires either the certainty of direct perception or the probability determined by imaginative, dualistic rationality.

This includes mechanical devices as extensions of the senses.

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:32 pm
Consider the lilies. When I read your post I thought of this biblical passage:

https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?s ... ersion=DRA

The human condition that puts us into opposition with ourselves has made it so that the lilies are greater than Solomon.

You also gave me the impression that you believe the universe serves us. What if objective human purpose is to serve the universe? Then why we should bother becomes obvious.

I like that quote, it seems that life wanted this experience of being human right?

It's not just a fluke or a random accident is it?

''You also gave me the impression that you believe the universe serves us..''
I'm not aware I did that Nick. So not sure where you've picked that up.

I do agree with the idea of an objective human purpose is to serve the universe...because that's how we earn our place in the eternal kingdom, it seems to me that there is an energy here that seeks loyalty, compassion, love, dedication, commitment and the capacity to endure the pain of separation until the urge to seek unity comes to us, so that we are able to reunite with light source. But it's as though we have to go through sometimes a very long awakening process. And once we've reached full blossom, we come into full alignment with our eternal self. When no more fear resides. Pain obviously does still occur because we are still in our body vehicle, but suffering has vanished. We get a sense that all is well, all is good so to speak.
I know this happens to some people as early as when they are in their twenties, before they've even had much life experience, that's weird, and why does that happen so early for some, any ideas? ...maybe they are star seeds from other galaxies or something, that have been around the block a few times, who knows..

I don't know what I am saying all this for, or why I have the urge to say it,except that it's a natural feeling for me to feel like this, I didn't make this feeling happen, I've been feeling it my entire life, mostly when I was a kid, I remember talking to god all the time when I was a kid, as if I knew god personally, the feeling seems to arise within me quite spontaneously uninvited as part of the dynamic of me being human. It's unique, it can't belong to us, it's got to come from something somewhere beyond...but we just don't know what that is, we feel it, know it, but can't really explain it. All we can do is allow these feelings to be present, and guide us to where they want to take us.

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Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:32 pmThen why we should bother becomes obvious.

Sorry I missed this bit.

The reason I said that is because of the sense of preference. What would choose this and why?

Yes, it's fun, and we like those parts, but then reject, don't like the not so fun parts.

For example torture scares the heck out of me, and I am aware this was once a human activity back in the medieval days, and what's even more scary is it is still occurring today..I see images of animals being tortured and it makes me cry so much that I want to die from being overwhelmed with grief for those animals, as they have no voice and cannot defend them selves.

How on earth would we want this, why bother to go through the hell that can be life, this part I do not get.

If I personally had the choice, I would not want to be born to this place ever again.

Having said that, I also know that we have the capacity to love and end all hostility to ourselves and the animals. But until we see sense in choosing unconditional love to all beings, it's hell as usual. This is why I say why bother, I don't know ..

I look at the news and I think to myself what a mess the human condition is in.

Are people secretly walking around in a state of quiet desperation and despair.

Are they just putting on a brave face for the cameras.

BTW, this is my human self coming through now, I'm speaking at the human level.

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Walker wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 4:18 pm

Nick_A wrote: ↑Sun Apr 01, 2018 3:09 pm
Supernatural refers to what takes place above Plato's divided line. We can observe what takes place below the level of the sun and call it natural. What takes place above the line is beyond our sensory perception so we call it supernatural.

Sensory perception is required to determine if something now is beyond the range of past experience, or is impossible.

To know that something is taking place beyond our sensory perception requires either the certainty of direct perception or the probability determined by imaginative, dualistic rationality.

This includes mechanical devices as extensions of the senses.

You raise a question that creates a great deal of animosity between secularists and universalists. This is the question of the relationship between the mind and the senses. Secularists limit knowledge by what the senses produces while universlists are open to what the mind introduces to the body. I’ll need a little help on this to avoid being shouted down.

http://www.informationphilosopher.com/k ... _line.html

At the end of Book VI of the Republic (509D-513E), Plato describes the visible world of perceived physical objects and the images we make of them (in our minds and in our drawings, for example). The sun, he said, not only provides the visibility of the objects, but also generates them and is the source of their growth and nurture. Many primitive religions identify the sun with God, for good reason.
Beyond this visible world, which later philosophers (esp. Immanuel Kant) would call the phenomenal world, lies an intelligible world (that Kant will call noumenal. The intelligible world is (metaphorically) illuminated by "the Good" (τον ἀγαθὸν), just as the visible world is illuminated by the sun.
The division of Plato's Line between Visible and Intelligible is then a divide between the Material and the Ideal, the foundation of most Dualisms. Plato may have coined the word "idea" (ἰδέα), using it somewhat interchangeably with the Greek word for shape or form (εἶδος ). The word idea derives from the Greek for "to have seen."
Plato's Line is also a division between Body and Mind. The upper half of the divided line is usually called Intelligible as opposed to Visible, meaning that it is "seen" by the mind (510E), by the Greek Nous (νοῦς), rather than by the eye.
In most modern Indo-European languages there are two words that correspond to the English "to know." One of these derives from "to be cognizant of" or "to be acquainted with," the other from "to have seen." The first is the cognate (sic) of English "know." e.g, Greek gnosis (γνῶσις), meaning knowledge. For knowledge the Greeks also used epistέme (ἐπιστήμη), the root for our word epistemology.
Examples of European words that we also translate "know," but which derive from "see," are savoir (Fr.) and wissen(Ger.)………………………..
……………..At Republic, Book VI, 508B-C, Plato makes an analogy between the role of the sun, whose light gives us our vision to see (ὄψις) and visible things to be seen (ὁρώμενα) and the role of the Good (τἀγαθὸν). The sun rules over our vision and the things we see. The Good rules over our (hypothetical) knowledge and the (real) objects of our knowledge (the forms, the ideas):
“This, then, you must understand that I meant by the offspring of the good which the good begot to stand in a proportion with itself: as the good is in the intelligible region to reason [CD] and the objects of reason [DE], so is this (sc. the sun) in the visible world to vision [AB] and the objects of vision [BC].”

How Plato understands the Good and how Plotinus understands the ONE and its relationship to Nous doesn’t come from analysis or the senses. It is knowledge already known by the mind and remembered through intuition.
The universalists appreciate it as reasonable while the secularists see it as preposterous. As a universalist it is natural for me to believe the secular mind and its emotional defense through denial is a weakness.

Nick_A: As I understand it, an experience of higher consciousness taking place in the higher conscious parts of our collective essence occurs in an instant. It quickly devolves into and is interpreted by our lower parts. The interpretation doesn’t belong to a higher reality but the instant does. The difficulty for any genuine mystic is to retain the experience of the instant and not sacrifice it to interpretations.

I totally agree Nick, everything occurs in the instant, it's neither higher or lower but here now this instant...higher and lower being conceptual (interpretations) of that which is always aware in the instant... compared with that which is unaware of the always aware instant.
The higher reality instant being prior to any interpretation, and yet not prior in the sense it it always this instantaneous moment...and that data is always accessed through the mind body mechanism ..kind of like there is a silent downloading of data that comes streaming into the brain on demand, and that demand is like a contact of surfaces, the universal non-local higher self in contact with it's temporal local lower self...and when that contact is made...the brain is going through a process of data recognition, it's remembering itself.. and that's how thought is born, aka the mind of knowledge is born, knowledge become known to itself...via that self to self contact.

Correct me if that's wrong Nick? this is just my way of expressing this in words...and my way of interpreting what you said.

Atla wrote: ↑Fri Mar 30, 2018 9:29 pmYou understand wrong. That experience of higher consciousness is still in your head (your human consciousness). A genuine mystic knows this, a false mystic will believe to have found a higher reality. What you call genuine is typical spiritual conmanship.

So how is Nick's understanding wrong Atla? ..Nick is pointing the to the realm that is available prior to any interpretation of it...of course to talk about that realm is going to involve an idea about it, aka an interpretation...this is unavoidable when discussing a topic such as this.

So it seems you have your way of putting it, which is right in your opinion of course, but how can you say Nick's is wrong?

What you are saying is that it is all inside the head of the human consciousness, which is true, it is all inside the head. But the consciousness that is interpreted as belonging to a human is just an interpretation of what consciousness is...consciousness is not confined to the human head ..it's universally everywhere at once...the human brain is the receptor to that universal consciousness, the brain is what's inside the head not the consciousness...do you see the difference?

You are both right, but Nick, explains the distinction between the two hemispheres , one being of the lower self, when the entity is identified with being it's brain....and the other being the higher self, the entity being identified with universal consciousness...Do you see this?




Atla, you go on to say ''........Conscience isn't about meaning. Meaning is also given, assigned by the human consciousness.........''

I understand how you arrive at this conclusion, this is because of human language. What is meaning except a concept.
Human is a concept too...but consciousness is not a concept, it's without beginning nor end, concepts are within it, consciousness is prior to any concept known...consciousness is the not-knowing all pervading awareness knowing on contact in the instant one with that knowing.

It's not the human that knows, the human is the known, known by consciousness only.

Of course consciousness has to take on the role play of being a human, else the human world wouldn't make any sense..we have to use the reference point of our self when communicating with others...so we use the symbol of I

We all use the same symbol I

There is only I

Everything else is just an interpretation of that one I

It's the one I that is doing the assigning made knowable in the meaning concept via the processing machine which is the brain..the brain is just a representation of what's being presented.


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