This an email my boyfriend sent to some close friends (and me of course). I thought they were interesting enough to pass on. Alert - this is very non-knitting related.
Just some rambling thoughts I thought I would share.
Check out this photo of conjoined twins. A baby was born with a conjoined twin attached, but the twin had no head! (don't worry, the photo is not gory or anything. The baby was fine)
As I was looking through all these pictures of conjoined twins, including ones that share a brain, I was struck by the realization that this is the ultimate display of "we are all one" and the interconnectedness of all things. Meaning, that the idea that we are all separate from each other somehow is just an illusion (you are you, I am me, the dog is the dog, the Earth and myself and the dog are all different and separate things). This is a very powerful illusion created by our egos, one that we trick ourselves into believing every minute of every day of our lives. And the idea that you can have two living beings that share the same brain (and therefore the same consciousness) is quite literally happening in some of these twins. This is a powerful display of the fact that one consciousness does not necessarily mean one body. You can have a body without consciousness, but (as far as we know) you cannot have consciousness without a body (specifically without a brain containing certain specialized regions). Though that last statement may be incorrect, and is unprovable (since we don't fully understand consciousness), it is correct as far as we can tell. It appears, through massive amounts of data, that not only is a brain required for consciousness, but certain specific regions of the brain are required to be operating functionally to sustain consciousness.
And then to see this baby with a twin with no head. It is undeniably real when I look at these photos, that each of our "selves", each of our egos, our personalities, and everything that we think defines us as who we are, is simply a collection of neurons and organic chemicals and electricity arranged (through time and space) in an extremely specific (and unique) way inside of our heads, and that true reality, if such a thing can be defined, encompasses all of our bodies, our egos, the earth that we walk on, and the entire universe that we exist in. It is all one thing and no part of it can be described outside of the rest of it.
What we think of as our "self" is simply our perspective reflecting our ego, which is never going to be completely accurate or perfect, because our perspective is never all-encompassing and is always biased based upon our individual experiences.
The Earth and all living creatures, and you, and even the moon and the sun are as much a part of "me" as my skin, hair, teeth and personality. Everything is me and I am everything.
But this can only make sense if you understand that the ego ("you") is but a structure in space and time, a looking glass through which to perceive the universe. Some would call it the soul. I think of it as a physiological structure. It has a physical existence I believe.
As Simon Posford (from Shpongle) says at the end of his shows, "You are we, and we are you."
