How do I define I???

Question

if my development following conception are only biological ones. and if i am born a blank slate and my conciseness is derived from experiences. could i define i as everything that is not me. is my 'individuality' nothing more than an anomaly produced from contradicting influences.

Answer 1

is not being unable to define " I " seemingly bothersome to you or you are not well satisfied in not able to define " I " ?

Then the real "I" is not  you, the uncomfortable one.

Words cannot define the " I " because they can only lead and point directions that sometimes result in "misleading".

some say it is spirit... it could be misleading to put it this way because a few people will conjuring up image of that word , which is not true for the real " I " that is formless.

Again i use formless to define " I ", then you might have a blank image. It is still is wrong.

"I" ,the real you and me, is accessible in only one time in our life, and is not imaginable. Some called it Tao , some called it god. some called it consciousness. And that one moment that we can access is now, when we are free from our thoughts, created by dysfunctional mind.

ps: there are two entity in us, you know. Ego and Consciousness or the " I " you refer too. You can try find the " I " by not indentifying with thoughts and things and identity that you put on this self you have and called it " life " when it's not.

Answer 2

The anomaly produced is contradicting to you. You are the subject of a brain. IF you are individual, you are individual as your brain. You are indoubt of your individuality. You are not created in the store you are produced in the brains. Your life is the group your brain is arranging. Yuor brain will arrange your environment ito your individuality.

Answer 3

Firstly, one would be benefitted by understanding the difference between the body and the soul. In Bhagavad Gita As It Is, translated and purported by His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Srila Prabhupada, Chapter 2, Verses 16-20 reads:

"Those who are seers of the truth have concluded that of the nonexistent there is no endurance, and of the existent there is no cessation. This seers have concluded by studying the nature of both. Know that which pervades the entire body is indestructible. No one is able to destroy the imperishable soul. Only the material body of the indestructible, immeasurable and eternal living entity is subject to destruction... For the soul there is never birth nor death. Nor, having once been, does he ever cease to be. He is unborn, eternal, ever-existing, undying and primeval. He is not slain when the body is slain."

According to Bhagavad Gita, the spirit soul is individual, it cannot be cut or destroyed. The material body is non- eternal but the soul is eternal so it must have inhabited other bodies in many past lives. It brings good or bad reactions from those lives to this one and actions in the current body create future lives. The soul wants to exit this cycle of repeated birth and death.

Answer 4

I often wonder what would be the effect of someone from birth not having any contact with the outside world.

(off topic, what inside me makes me think that so cruel/sad?)

Would this end up some sort of variation on "the kid that grew up with the wolves?"

If it were a m/f how would they relate?

This would bring a result either way on the "blank slate theory"

I'm sure the n***s had this one on the "to do" list.

if not, somewhere else as I wrote this.

Answer 5

this is a serious debate lasting over the eons with many levels of truth to it, all valid from one perspective or another. well at one level you could say - this body is all their is - but what if you lost a finger in an accident, would you say your less you? I'd hope not.

at another level - well i give to the poor, go to church every Sunday, blah blah - those are just character traits and they change with the wind. "well, that was the old me" perhaps, but where do these traits come from? from...

another still - your thoughts - yes, a very safe place to be, it would seem. "i must be my thoughts" what about that ad jingle you can't get out of your head? if it's YOUR head and YOUR thoughts, why cant you get it out? and would you really define yourself by the propoganda you digest daily? I'd hope not.  a basic meditation tequnique is to step back from your thoughts and nonjudgmentally observe them as a separate thing. well if you can watch your thaughts, who is the one doing the watching?

at the ultimate level - you are the void - the real you is that quiet observer you brought with you when you were born before you started creating opinion of this is good and that is bad creating your reality. everything just WAS when you got here, until you decided to have preference over things. what you preferred became the good. all else was the bad. and you added to this subtly untill the society consumed you and you became a personality. but the quiet observer remained in the sidelines always, watching the storyline we call our lives.

Answer 6

I am that I am - God, supposedly

You could be what you are not if you are going to be influenced by it. However, at this point in time you can't be defined by something you've not experienced yet.

Yah???

Answer 7

You aren't born with a blank-slate.

Here is a proof:

First, imagine that you were born with a blank-slate and imagine that you came to know your first item of knowledge (as the latter must have happened). IF you were born with a blank slate, your first piece of knowledge would had to have been a method for coming to know things...as you cannot come to know anything without a way in which you came to think about and know it. But then, if it was a method by which it allowed a faculty for coming to know things, you couldn't have come to first know it without already having a faculty for comming to know things!

Any way, it seems the consensus among cognitivie scientists, linguists, and philosophers is that some innate knowledge is required for learning.

_______

Let's hope that you are incorrect about what personal identity is...

For if you are correct, then what I am, essentially, is 'an anomaly produced from contradicting influences'.

So, then, 'I' - this very person - am identical with 'an anomaly produced from contradicting influences'.

But this doesn't seem correct, as it says nothing of a person existing over time. It says nothing of 'what' has these influences.

Second, you argument is quite thin:

1. " IF my developement following conception is biological and I am born w/ a blank slate, and my conciousness is derived from experience, THEN 'I' is everything 'not me'.

2. "My developement following conception is biological and I am born w/ a blank slate, and my conciousness is derived from experience."

Therefore,

C. " 'I' am not me."

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First, you have to prove the conditional - that is, you would have to proove that premise (2) implies (C). What is more, you would also have to prove all of the conjucts in (2) as well. Third, you would have to explain the appearance of contradiction in the conclusion (C). If, " 'I' am not me " is true, then what is the 'me'. Presumably, the 'I' for a person is the self that gives a coherent perspective to all the experiences taking place over time. Your argument cannot account for this at all. The 'I' is like the the thing that *has* the experiences, it gives the experiences a perspective, rather than the experiences just being a random collection of events....

In any case, I would think more about this.

Answer 8

You have a body, you have a mind, you are spirit. I=Spirit

Answer 9

Sure, you might be what you are not, but let me ask you this:

To what degree are you not you and in what aspect?