GENIUS FORUMS

Losing your identity is one of the most significant things you can do. Sense of self separates us from the world [Update: this is not necessarily so]. Loss of identity restores your body’s natural sensitivity to its environment. This has several effects. It eliminates time, the ego, and autonomy and replaces these with absolutely nothing (U.G. Krishnamurti). That can be a very positive way of living. To dive right in:

The reason loss of identity eliminates time is simple. As an object changes, it may or may not be the same object to change. Depending on how change is perceived determines whether or not there is time. If we find that an object keeps its nature – its identity – then it has not really changed. There is therefore no measurement of time. If we find that an object loses its nature, then it is not the same object. Again, there is no measurement of time. Only when identity is maintained across a change is there time. This might as well be illusory. Identity is time (Jack Haas).

From the timeless perspective, nothing ever changes. However, from the same perspective nothing ever continues. The reason for this is that as something changes, it loses its identity and thereby its means of further change. What there is instead is only absence. Objects come and go as blips on radar. Change is continuity.

We have invented socialization as a means to reduce aloneness. However, while aloneness is framed as a problem, within it is a solution. Total aloneness is the condition of there being neither self nor other. When this condition is met, what is left is only silent, abiding empathy. Aloneness is oneness (J. Krishnamurti).

Society and personal autonomy are a lot alike. Society gives people certainty about the world. In return for that people give society furtherance. Both society and autonomy are means of controlling the “self”. This is a self that’s rooted in continuous thought and conflict (U.G. Krishnamurti). Society can give certainty only through thought, which is a flimsy way to do that. As thought goes, so does society. The same is true for autonomy. As either autonomy or autonomy is removed, the other is as well. Society is autonomy.

Removing ourselves from cause and effect is a worthy task. Only when we learn to do things for no reason can this happen. One cannot simply do something in hopes it will be random. Hope must go. Like a savior setting a prisoner free, abandoning hope sets free the one trapped in cause and effect. As a person hopes, he or she sets up causes and effects. The reasoning behind that: if I do this (cause) then maybe there will be that (effect). Everything is interpreted in terms of how they affect his or her hope. Hope is cause and effect.

Many have found their lives utterly meaningless at some point. However, his does not necessarily result in depression. At this point something novel may come – liberation, perhaps. Indeed, as meaningless a person’s life may seem, it is that much mysterious. It is as if the lack of meaning is a clue to something transcendental. Meaninglessness is mystery.
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Comments welcome!

Removing ourselves from cause and effect is a worthy task.

How is deluding yourself worthy?

Exciplex wrote:Losing your identity is one of the most significant things you can do. Sense of self separates us from the world. Loss of identity restores your body’s natural sensitivity to its environment.

Our sense of self is a form of separation which creates our world, every time again.

Bridging that divide is by definition a loss of meaning, existence and ultimately life. And yes, the closer to death the more closer to life we feel and senses can go wild.

What I'd like you to dig further into is this 'positive way to live', without ego, as I see ego as crucial in positive as well as negative forms of life. What kind of life are you envisioning, what is worthwhile after meaninglessness? As life itself is strife and purpose.

Exci = excited
Plex = perplexer

Trevor Salyzyn: I've experienced causelessness. It is a real state of being.

Diebert van Rhijn: Not much is worthwhile from the perspective of someone finding his or her life totally meaningless. It is inconsistent to find worth and no meaning at the same time. The life I suggest is something I have experience with, though. One characteristic of it is absolute absence of sorrow. Another is absence of personality. I hold that we really don't know exactly what life is. It can be mechanical or mental, but I don't reduce it to being just that. If it is just strife and purpose, do bacteria strive and have purpose? Life is the way we function.

You're correct that self creates the world, in the sense that world is "other". There is an alternative, though: no self, no world. When we speak of the "world", it is always relative to the self. When we see that there is no self or world, what we have is an absolute.

Steven Coyle: Good one. Funny.