YOU ARE ME, AND IT IS QUITE PROVABLE

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"You are yourself because you have an illusion in the form of lived experience and events that happened to you."

Why are these things "illusions"? When you use the word "illusion", what exactly do you mean?

"If we strip away labels like your hobbies, social status, favorite color, etc., [ . . . ]"

Why would we strip away any of those things?

" [ . . . ] all that remains is pure consciousness playing a role it assigned to itself."

What is this "pure consciousness"? Have you ever experienced it?

Why would this "pure consciousness" "play" this "role"? Why did it "assign" this "role" to itself? And how?

Why should I pretend to be able to strip-away all of these "illusory" experiences, in order to prove the existence of something which you say is ultimately real, but that no one can ever experience? You say that you are me, and I am you, and that we are all everyone, but I think you're Immanuel Kant.

"All that is left is the feeling that you are someone specific, not the table standing across from you, and not the other person nearby."

So if I were stripped of every fact about myself, besides the feeling that I am myself, all that would remain is the feeling that I am myself? What a novel idea.

"This is exactly what suggests that the Ego is merely a label that helps us survive and avoid rebuilding ourselves from scratch every single time."

Who created this label? And why? And how does it "help"? Why do we need "help" to survive? Why is it important that we do? And who is "we?" I thought you were me, and I was you, and we were both the table, etc. Does the table also use its ego to help it survive?

"It is a product of evolution, and it is entirely necessary for our society to keep functioning."

Did the table also evolve this ego? I'm sorry, I meant, did we? I meant, we meant, did we? We meant, we meant, we meant, did we? And if not, why? And if we are the table, why don't we already know the answer?

If the table didn't evolve an ego, and doesn't have a society, why doesn't it? What makes "us" so different from the table, that we had to experience this thing called "evolution", which causes us to experience "illusions" like ego and memory, when the table didn't? Whoever "we" are, since, according to you, there is nothing that isn't "us".

In other words: Why couldn't everything just as easily never have had an ego? Why does "society" have to function at all? Why is there "Evolution"?

By the way, I am somewhat aware of this term "evolution" that you're using, though I'm not sure we refer to the same thing by it. From the little I know, "evolution" refers to a process of change.

If you're saying that "ego" is a product of evolution, that would mean that there was a time at which we did not have it. Do you have any idea when that may have been, and why the change occurred? I believe that some researchers have a rough theory of why aquatic life became amphibious, and when. Can the same be said for ego? Why was it "needed"? Could we evolve out of it? Why haven't we?

"From this, it follows that we are essentially one large consciousness that split into billions of particles to explore the Universe. In other words, we are that very universe exploring itself."

Couldn't we just as well NOT explore the universe, and NEVER have explored it, if every experience of it is only an illusion, and the only true reality is "pure consciousness," which is what we started out as anyway?

Or was that the point? To realize that everything but "pure consciousness" was all just an illusion?

But if we began as "pure consciousness", we'd have no reason to ask that question in the first place. We'd already know that there was nothing else to know. Or rather, we wouldn't even have a way of knowing to ask whether there was anything to know.

"From a physics standpoint, the "Law of Conservation of Mass and the cycling of atoms in the Universe" applies here too. All the atoms in our bodies were once inside the cores of the exact same stars. Furthermore, atoms constantly circulate across the planet. Some of the carbon and oxygen molecules currently in my cells were exhaled by you a year ago. Physically, we consist of the exact same, constantly mixing matter."

You seem to be mistaking a rhetorical device for a logical corollary.

I could have a wallet you once owned, but that would not mean that we shared the same consciousness any more than had I never found it. You could eat Immanuel Kant's shit, but that would not make you any more Immanuel Kant than I am. All the matter in the universe could've touched all the other matter, but what does that matter, especially when you've said everything I can experience in the universe is an illusion anyway (including your memory of the theory you've just quoted)?

This is supposedly Hegel's rebuttal to Kant's rebuttal of Leibniz--that what holds for the finite does not hold for the infinite.

The matter you have described is not infinite in number--though who is to say if it's infinite in time? Perhaps it is like Parmenides' world: the how much is finite, the how long, infinite.

But this "pure consciousness" you've alleged is, according to you, eternal.

Then how can you explain making an argument for its existence dependent on matter: a finite thing which you have already said is in fact immaterial and secondary to the primary reality of infinite "pure consciousness"?

Or will you make the case that matter is infinite, not in space, but in time, and therefore like your concept of consciousness?

"Psychology states [. . . .]"

Who is psychology? Is we us too?

" [. . . . ] that a person is not born a personality but becomes one through the process of growing up. We are influenced by the people we meet, the books we read, music, movies, art as a whole, upbringing, environment, and even opinions. Our psyche consists of reflections of one another."

What does the table think of this?

"The conclusion suggests itself that consciousness is a single ocean, while physical bodies and memory are merely temporary cups scooping up this water. Therefore, after death, you do not vanish but continue to exist in other bodies, playing a different role. Only your Ego and the body that carries the concept of "you" disappear."

So if I have no content, I continue to exist in the form of other things which have no content?

We have another word for this "single ocean of consciousness" in English: we call it "nothing." However, most people seem to find that term less comforting.

"That is why you are me."

That is why who is who?

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