Identity and the Soul
Identity and the Soul
If there is no soul, what binds our identity together?
For thousands of years people have believed that our identity is grounded in an immaterial soul that is constant throughout life. But what if we have no immaterial soul and our consciousness is grounded in the material substance of our brain?
If that is the case, we would have to rethink our identity as well. If the very most sacred essence of my being is grounded in my material brain, and this material brain is constantly changing, then the very most sacred essence of my being is constantly changing as well.
Thus I have to wonder, when I wake up each day, am I the same person? And if I am, what makes it so? The body I have? My memories? The personality I have? My relationships? My job? All of these things, and many more, seem to play a role in forming our identity.
But then perhaps my future self is someone else. And perhaps growth is also death?
There have been some great tales of reincarnation with some quality evidence to support it. Sure there are many frauds, but there are also many cases that defy explanation. It only takes one case of reincarnation to be true to disprove the material brain concept.
If reincarnation is true, it seems that the true identity is much more stable than the usual "me" identity - because it transcends particular life histories and personalities. If the material brain is true, it seems that the true identity is much less stable than the usual "me" identity - because it changes throughout life and even fluctuates on a moment by moment basis. In either case there seems to be an incompatibility with the ordinary sense of having such and such a life history with such and such personality.
When it comes to evidence for reincarnation or other seemingly non-material phenomena my instinct is to challenge materialism at its weakest point first, its account of consciousness arising from the brain. Striking to the heart of the conflict will force the issue and eventually open up a space of new, unexplored land. This is why I wrote my thesis focusing on how visual perception gives rise to consciousness, because as far as the brain goes, we know most about visual perception, and visual phenomenology is perhaps the clearest case of consciousness.
Look at near-death experience (NDE). It has been reported that basically dead people (their consciousness) were able to flow around, see what was happening in the room, what was happening on some completely different and distant places. And this was happening even though there were zero brain waves, i.e. the brain was actually totally dead. I've read about this in books by Stanislav Grof and also from Anita Moorjani in Dying To Be Me, where she describes here own NDE experience and how she "magically" got rid of cancer. So it pretty much seems that this is not about our brains so much...
Aren't you missing the possibility of immaterial soul that is not constant?
In any cases, it seems to me we are mixing multiple somehow dependent pieces here, particularly we have to ask
Now, let me share my thoughts:
Let me add my personal experience. Once it happened that I could see myself as a wave on the ocean, a wave thinking that it is separated from the rest. But can you separate a wave from the ocean? It's still water. The moment you look down you see that there are infinite depths that never end and that all the waves on the ocean are actually parts of the same mass of water. I experiences actually melting into this universal ocean of life. Since then I cannot truly experience myself as a separate identity. I feel that having an identity is artificial, as in cultural identity or something. I am not defined by my personal identity, how I look, what I think, what music I like listening to. Better to take a deep breath and let the whole universe come alive.
Anyway, more like a topic to write a book about :-) Well, better not to waste your time on rationalising. This has to be experienced, discovered. Don't listen to me. Find for yourself. We each have our own model of reality :-)