ARE WE ONE PERSON BUNDLED OUT INTO DIFFERENT BODIES?

the argument

I am the same person but in different bodies. My neighbour is as much me as I am.

 

Here is the proof from transfer of consciousness that all life is one communion. If I could see with my eyes and my eyes were removed and replaced with somebody else's eyes I would experience no difference. I would feel as if no change took place at all. Consciousness could be switched from body to body all the time and nobody would notice any difference because we are all that one power.

Imagine the consciousness in you was transplanted into another body. Imagine you don't take your memory or intelligence or any other faculty with you. You will get the other person's memories and faculties. You would feel as if you were always that person. There would be no difference if consciousness of person a was transferred to person b and person b's transferred to person a's. This is the answer to those who say that there is no proof that all people have the same power of consciousness. This is our answer to those who say that if a is conscious and b is conscious that does not mean that there is only one consciousness.

You may say that you don't feel like you are the same consciousness as say Barack Obama. You only feel you are not - but feelings are not guides to reality. You can feel it is going to rain and that does not mean it will. It is only the bodies causing that feeling. Moreover, if you are conscious of a panoramic view and you become conscious of a beautiful diamond the following week you will have the same feeling of separation. This time the separation is caused by time. If time can do that then so can having different bodies.

My one consciousness tunes into the world by looking with two eyes. The fact that I have one awareness does not mean I have one eye! So it does not mean I have only one body. I am in many bodies. The majestic emperor of the world is the same person as the child dying of starvation and poverty in the slums of Manila.

You don't feel you exist when you are fast asleep and you do exist. It is easier for the one power of awareness to be in two separate bodies than for that to happen but it happens. Electricity is one energy shared out all over the universe.
 
Here is the proof from the time-warp that all consciousness is one being.

Suppose Rachel enters her house to answer the telephone in her hall. She sits at the phone. Suddenly there is a rip in time. And she comes in the door again. Now we have two Rachels. One enters the hall and the other is sitting at the phone. They are the same person. But Rachel at the door and Rachel at the phone will feel in every sense that they are two separate persons. Philosophers may object that this scenario is impossible. True, but that is not the point. It shows that if I think I am me and not you I am wrong.

There would be two of me. I would not experience the other me as me. It would be the same as a different person. But it is not a different person. When there two mes clearly the fact that I feel separate from the other me has nothing at all to do with proving that our consciousness is individual and that we are not one spirit or mind parcelled out into different bodies. No the contrary is the case. The time machine example proves that we are the one spirit. We do not experience communion with one another in bread and wine but in loving each other.

If you lose your memory, you won't feel connected to yourself as you were a second ago. Yet you are the same being. Just because consciousness has different experiences does not mean that it has to be more than one consciousness. It is the one consciousness having different experiences. The fact that a may have an opposite kind of life to b does not prove that a and b are not the same being.

Life is one energy. Plants have life . Animals have life. We have life.

There is union. There is communion.

Space has height. It has length. It has breadth. Yet it is one. It is one in three and three in one. In the same way, we are different manifestations of the one entity. We still experience ourselves as individuals and that must be respected. There can be no room for thinking, "Oh I will let that baby starve on the street. I will make it up to it by enjoying myself better for me and the baby are one and the same anyway." Your joy will be in coming to the assistance of your other self.
 
Why would the one consciousness become all those different people? Does it not look like it is playing a game? No. If I went back in time in a time machine and met myself from ten years ago, practically speaking I would have to treat this me as another person with love and respect. The fact that there is two mes would not mean I wouldn't experience genuine love for the other me. We are the one being in many bodies so that we can practice love.
 
Believe that when you bring a blessing to yourself that you are a part of group consciousness, all minds in the world are one in a way. So to bless yourself is to bless everybody else too. We are one. To improve a leaf on the tree is to improve the tree.
 
To hurt another person is literally to punish yourself. You and other people are one and the same person. You may not feel the pain now in this body but you are still making yourself suffer. True self-love means you look after other people. This is encouraging. It is easier to do good when you realise that you do it for yourself and that it is not all about other people. We need this teaching. Without it we will be less effective at improving ourselves as good people if we are inclined to be selfish.
 
Love others - they are your other selves. This doctrine literally invites us to care for others because they are ourselves. The notion that other people are totally separate beings makes helping others more of a chore than a pleasure. You end up wondering why you may be inclined make yourself unhappy at times to make others happy. Now you know why.

If you believe that other people are not really you, you will find it impossible to love them. Indeed, if you believe they are not other manifestations of yourself and try to love everybody the same you will spread your love thin and your loved ones will suffer for it. But with our philosophy, we can disagree with Jesus Christ who said that people should leave spouses and loved ones for him to serve strangers instead of them in those uber-dangerous and squalid times. No, we hold that to serve your parents and spouse and children most of all is to love other people in the sense that your loved ones are one and the same person as the strangers. Why then can't we say we must look after the tramp we have never seen before in preference to our grandfathers? The answer is that our hearts call on us to treasure family. It is therefore the vocation we call on ourselves.

It is good to treat others as another self. It is better to see that others are literally you but in different bodies. That way, if you race your friend to the million dollars and they get it you will not care. You have still won. No matter what somebody takes from you they have taken nothing. Thus there is no need to fear the success or well-being of "others". They are not others but MES. There are no enemies. Enemies are only people who think they hate one another. They are deluded to think that each person is separate from the next person. The one who hates me does not see that she or he is me. Remember, you only give away what you already have. You have actually on the magical level given your friend the million dollars. You need to fill your heart with the energy of love to be able to give the love away. Giving a friend a million, manifesting a million for that person is love.
 
When you think you do not have what others have you get upset and jealous and envious. Others are you but in different bodies. Seeing this tells you that the confidence you envy in another person can be yours because it is yours. To see it as somebody else's raises the prospect of never achieving the confidence they achieved.
 
To hurt another person is to hurt yourself. Love yourself by service of others. Feed the poor. Clothe the naked. Give shelter to the stranger. Smile at the lonely. Educate the uneducated. Visit prisoners. As often as you fail to do these things you fail to care for yourself.

When another suffers, in truth, it is I who suffer. This is literally true. To love another is to love myself. No better truth has ever appeared that motivates me to help others.
 
We know that the consciousness in you and me is the one power, the one energy. When somebody dies, the drop of energy returns to the big pool. So when somebody dies, they become us in the sense that their consciousness is the same entity as the consciousness in us. Death as the complete end of you does not exist. We should call it "transformation point" not death.

I am one yet many for I value love so much. Christians hold that God is one being and not one person. He is three persons in one being. They say this is not contradictory for he is not said to be three persons in one person but three persons in one being. We believe in one consciousness, one being, that manifests in many bodies. Each one of us is this consciousness in a different stream. This stream can last forever. In other words, the person Paul might die but Paul can live on in a new reincarnated body and do this forever.

We don't need to join Churches that claim to be one and holy and to be uniting people. We don't need their communion rites to make us one. We are one. We just need to see. To try anything else is merely refusing to build proper unity. It is creating outward unity as a substitute for the real thing.
 
Strike the balance between honouring the group and the individual comprising it. The group has needs. The individuals making up the group have needs too. Balance these - don't neglect the rights of the group for the rights of the individuals or the rights of the individual for the rights of the groups.
 
The notion of one person many bodies can comfort those who feel guilty following an abortion.
 
If there is consciousness in the body of the aborted foetus, it can be believed that when the mother has an abortion that it goes to the womb of another woman. Abortion in this view is not murder but sending a baby somewhere else. The need to have an abortion and the opportunity can be taken as signs from the baby that it is time for it to be sent to another mother. Miscarriages and abortions could reflect the idea that spirits become bodies and change their minds and decide to go to the womb of another. Or the spirits didn't want to be on earth very long. It is helpful to teach that if a woman would be doing wrong by having an abortion then the opportunity just won't happen. A woman must never be caused to feel guilt over having an abortion.
 
All that happens to me is chosen by me!
 
If I believe and perceive that all that happens to me is caused by me and chosen by me I will be able to accept unpleasant things better.
 
This is better than the advice, "If something awful happens to you, just accept it."
 
We gave up our amazing knowledge to become free agents. The being that endeavours to learn is freer than the person who knows it all.
 
People may feel that it is important that everyone reflect on this message - doing so sends healing energy to those who use abortion.
 
One major attraction of the one person many bodies doctrine is that it seems to console the bereaved. They have a reason to believe that the departed will live on in their hearts and memories.

We are ultimately the one person: our memories of our beloved departed literally keeps them alive in our hearts and minds. They are made really present in our hearts. Our heads become tabernacles that enshrine them.
 
Value the body, your sexuality, your emotions, your beauty and your human reason - we believe we value them so much that our spirits took a risk and became flesh and will do many times. No matter how splendid a temple may be, it is never a temple. The body of the "lowest" person on earth is a greater temple than it. A building that cannot do anything or sense anything is not a temple. The body works and senses and thus it proves itself to be the house of deity.

Faith/belief is very powerful. It colours how you see and perceive. If you see people as shifty you will filter out the evidence against this and remember the evidence for it. Thus you end up harming yourself through your belief. Is it not better to see them as yourself in other bodies and as deities in their own right? You will love and cherish and respect them better. Belief is you being God. When you worship God, it is really the beliefs that you have constructed that you worship. This is idolatry and shows that it would be wiser to adore yourself and others in the first place!

reply

The major error in the reasoning above is the thought that if my consciousness is switched with somebody else's we will not notice any difference. It is true no difference will be noticed but it does not follow that my consciousness and hers or his is the same. If an eye sees in Spain and in Taiwan it does not follow that they are the same eye.

 

The time warp argument overlooks the fact that time may be set up to avoid the contradiction of you meeting yourself because your future self left the future and went back in time. It assumes it makes sense to imagine a time warp but it does not. It is fantasy stuff.

 

And if there is only one person who has to live in many bodies in order that he may love himself more there is nothing really praiseworthy about that. It is narcissistic. Is it really right for me to extend myself into countries where my other selves will suffer and die? The other self I make that suffers and dies so that I can love me in her or him is being used not loved.

 

When the love is shallow and not real then why not say I become other people in order to have fun torturing them? The fact remains that the me in this body does not know how they feel so the notion that we are all one person in many bodies will not stop people being selfish and neglecting others.

 

The abortion argument is correct but it can also be used to argue, "If I am one person in many bodies then who cares if I murder another? It only kills that manifestation of me and not me."

 

They argue that wrong or suspicious belief is bad for you which is why you should hold that others are as much you as you are. But it does not change the fact that even if we accept this doctrine we will not really feel as much love for everybody else as we do for ourselves and relatively few others. It is the same hypocrisy as, love your neighbour as yourself.

 

And if you only honour others because they are you, what will happen when you decide they are not you? You will probably have to go completely self-absorbed.

 

And the notion that you choose to be born in a famine country is insane.

 

At first glance, it seems that the belief that you have chosen the terrible things that happen to you is comforting. But it makes you blame yourself for them and for the hurt it causes those who suffer with you. And if the things are not your fault, trying to feel that they are will only make it worse. You will be trying to deny the reality.

The notion that you are freer if you work to attain knowledge is nonsense. It would imply that a person who is given knowledge in a book to learn is worse off than a person who has to go to the other end of the world to get such knowledge. Knowledge and freedom are separate faculties.