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@Razard86 Its because we identified with being a separate self that lives somewhere inside the body. More accurately behind the eyes somewhere. But of course that's just an illusion. A helpful way to understand how the brain creates the illusion of the self is to think about perceptual illusions such as the Kanizsa triangle (see the picture below)In this illusion we see a triangle even though no triangle has been drawn, due to the surrounding lines and shapes giving the impression of there being a triangle. Our brain essentially ‘fills in the gaps’. our sense of a self is similarly a hallucination created through the combination of parts. We perceive the self as a result of different regions in our brain trying to combine our experiences, thoughts, and behaviours into a narrative, and in this sense the self is artificial. our brain naturally create narratives in order to make sense of the world. Essentially, our brains are always thinking in terms of stories: what the main character is doing, who they are speaking to, and where the beginning, middle, and end is. and our self is a fabrication which emerges out of the story-telling powers of our brain.

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I already explained it in the post. Re-read it again . A helpful analogy though is the dream analogy. Within your nighttime dream.. you always think you are your body and your body is real. When a dream car swerves towards you.. your dream body jumps out of the way to avoid getting hurt. Your dream is created by just One Thing. Your mind. No one else’s. So it’s just One Thing, creating all these many things. Real things, or at least.. you’re quite certain their real” while you’re dreaming. But then you wake up.. and you see they were just projections from your One Thing. Your waking dream is no different. “It just seems to be more continuous and last longer,” as Ramana Maharshi said, “but a dream projection, nonetheless.” At the Absolute level.. it’s obvious there is only One Thing.. or more accurately, NoThing. The Unmanifest. The Void. In enlightenment, or what you call ‘transcendence,’ we can get a fragrance of that.

Obviously I don't . I could die the next moment. In fact, The universe might suddenly disappear completely in a blink of an eye for no reason at all. Reality is an illusion .solidity is a dream.

What would you do ?

Exactly . In our everyday awake state of consciousness.. the body is perceived as made of separate organic “stuff”.. and seems to has a clear boundary between itself and the surrounding space. But actually..no mathematicallly precise boundary is possible between any object and its surrounding. It's true ...With psychedelicds.. In some altered state of consciousness the solidness of the body can dissolve and the skin boundary can seem to disappear. You may call such altered state of consciousness abnormal or even delusional. But paradoxically it's such abnormal perceptions that more closely mirror the true nature of reality. Our so-called normal perception of a material world populated by material bodies more like a functionally adaptive chronically sustained delusion.

Might be because of illness . But that's not the issue here (how are you going to die ). Its just the mere fact that you are gonna die after 24 hours ...how would you choose to spend your last day?

Yes we are under the spell that our consciousness arises from within the body and projected out into the "external world "and then reflected back into our sense organs and gives us data about our environment. Some materialists even argue that this data is being filtered by the brain and the world as we see it is not how it "actually " is outside of our perceptions. Of course that claim has zero empirical evidence. As our consciousness of this particular set of qualia is the only thing that reality is composed of .

Thanks for this. Sincerely appreciate it ?.

I consider myself intelligent and knowledgeable in philosophy. I study and read tons of books for famous philosophers. Starting from Aristotle to Socrates to rene Descartes to kant etc And I believe I have a good style of writing and articulating philosphical ideas . So why not use this passion as a career path and start to write a book and get paid for publishing it ? My question is: Let's say I've already got the writing thing down, and am able sit and write however many pages it takes to write a book. I go to Amazon, search Sci-Fi, look at the top books and know that I could write a book that's similar to maybe 5 of the top 10 books that are in the Sci Fi category. I write that book. . . what then? Do I just publish the book on Amazon and wait for people to buy it? Do I go to forums, start a youtube channel, do the sort of extracurricular things that go along with branding so that I could find an audience? Do I focus on tags, keywords, categories, hashtags? Do I follow other authors in the same categories on Twitter and other social media hoping that they might notice that I'm a writer? If I just write a solid book in a popular category and put it up on Amazon, will people just go buy my book, or do I have to figure out how to make connections? thank you for your insight. I really appreciate it.

Thanks . I have few questions though .. Some writers make extensive outlines. Some writers typically spend a year just on an outline. I’ve learned that a book is such a massive undertaking, you need to think it through first. An outline helps. I make outlines, but they’re living, breathing things. When a character does or says something that surprises me, I go back to my outline to see how that changes things. I then update my outline. I’m constantly changing and adding to it. I always expect surprises to happen. Most people would say, “Sit down, and just write what comes naturally.” That’s good advice. Really. But not good enough. As humans we have a wonderful tendency to go off in a tangent and think about other things. It’s a gift because it let us be curious about things that we’ve discovered until now, but also a curse if you’re a writer or a student. So how do i stay focused and on track with the general idea of the book and not let my mind wander and go in tangents and sometimes getting out of the outline?

⁶@Yarco not at all .thanks for your reply . I guess I have put the cart before the horse. I first need to write the damn book .before I go worrying about how to sell it . After giving it a second thought ..I realized its the writing part that's most challenging rather than how to sell it . How to start writing? Also ..Im not just interested in philosophy.I want to start writing novels, hopefully good ones. The thing is I haven't written anything since high school. Back then I was a pretty good writer but that was 2 page essays and rarely a 10 page max short story. So 3 years later, my writing skills are 0. I have a few novel plot ideas but when I sit down to write, I don't know how or what to write. What I'm looking for is advice on where to begin learning skills from the ground up and how to approach this new hobby in a smart way. I guess I just have to Write something. Get it on the page. At least a paragraph.. no edits no deletes just get used to the act of writing. I'm up to the stage where I have the whole story in my head but I look at the paragraph and hate the prose and hate the junky way I set it up and delete all of it. I need to Just get used to getting the words on the page. A paragraph at a time just keep going. Proof read later. Purely for the exercise of starting writing in general.

Yup. It bothers me when people dive deep into their terminology expecting to find nothing but being understood when they themselves are not clear about their own definitions. But I agree with you anyways . Reality can't be described with words .because reality is a whole .and words are just fragments of the whole .so the part cannot contain the whole .

@Nilsi so you have no idea what you are talking about ??

When you say "absolute being ", what ,exactly, are you talking about ?

It's a matter of identity. What do you identify as ? If you identify as this human body ..then obviously thus will die .and anyone who says otherwise needs a serious reality check . BUT if you identity as nothingness. Obviously nothingness cannot die .

@Michael569 thanks for the information. So the bottom line is i Can't build muscle mass while water fasting? Since you theoretically need just a calorie surplus and enough protein, and can’t you get this from fasting? Why can't I get it from protein powders? Is it because You break down adipose tissue while fasting? but since every living cell has some protein, why can’t you take sufficient protein from this breakdown? Another point ..I hear the “you only get 31 calories per pound of fat a day” line a lot. It’s been attacked by some(some fat-adapted people lose more, some very lean athletes have demonstrably lost more fat in a day than this theoretical limit allows, and water fasting increases GH to some extent to prevent the loss of muscle mass, and their refutations make sense to me. You can always leech out more fat from a seemingly endless reservoir of it, so you might think a calorie surplus wouldn’t be a problem, but maybe fat is just harder to derive energy from? It’s obviously not as prioritized in most people’s bodies as glucose or glycogen. I thought about just going on a simple 500-calorie deficit and working out, but since I already have successful prolonged water fasts under my belt, I thought this wouldn’t be a problem. However, if I can’t lift during an extended water fast(or at least can’t lift with the expectation of hypertrophy rather than preservation), then I might just fast until I’ve gone below 20% body fat and then start lifting with that increased nutrient partitioning?

@King Merk @Jannes @aurum I do Strength training during a fast which will help me maintain and keep muscle.. even if I don't get the enough nutrition ? Im Basically water fasting for the last 10 days or so . I lost a LOT of weight in the first two weeks . so I suspect I had a lot of water weight and crap in my digestive system. After that it was about 1lb/day on average, which is on par with what people here say. I'd break the fast every now and then due to temptations but hopped back on pretty quickly. Helps that I walked about 2 hours a day. So can I water fast for 3/4 of the day and exercise during that time and only eat one meal per day before sleep consisting of nothing but healthy protein?

@Michael569 can't I build muscle because of changes in hormone levels?... During periods of fasting your body drastically increases GH production, a hormonevassociated with lean tissue growth, fat reduction, etc. The body is quite adept at repairing itself even in the absence of nutrients. How can you build muscle during water fast? Is there a chance ? How else can I get a skinny muscular shape ?I wanna lose as much fat as possible and gain as much lean muscles as possible. I mean, i've seen many people say that you can keep weight training during extended water fasts, but what's the benefit of it? Don't you need to consume protein in order to build-maintain muscle? (I'm asking, I have no idea)

So does Strength training during a fast help you maintain and keep muscle.?. You will most likely NOT build muscle during a fast.. i need to really be in a caloric surplus to do that. I should definitely strength train while on a fast...but focus on building muscle once I'm done.. and incorporating something more like intermittent or alternate day fasting. I finished a 14 day fast.. and am finishing up a 12 day on friday. After this, I plan to alternate day fast so I can focus at lifting. During my first fast.. I gained strength.. but this time I've gone down about 10% on my lifts. I'm not as strong as I was on my first fast.

But I'm a nobody .no one will invite me on his podcast or TV channel. Doesn't that just come after I already publish the book and get a little bit known for it ? I will be known as the author of the book (X).

I wouldn't consider myself a materialist .even though I've got some orange shadow to integrate. I like to appeal to science for such issues. Of course you don't have an experience of consciousness ending or not upon dying..why? Because you are still alive! Duh ! The only way to know is by actually dying. But at least we can measure brain activity. We can measure signs of life. Death causes these to stop. There is no measurable thing that suggests any other kind of activity continues after death. Sure, you can't prove there's no afterlife, but that's the default position , so unless an afterlife can actually be proven to exist, the "only evidence against it" is now everything we know as the practice and study of statistics. The fact that there is no evidence in favor of it is precisely why the doubt exists. The doubt is not the evidence against it. Somewhat more facetiously, but shorter: I can't prove there are no invisible leprechauns playing in my room right now, but that doesn't make both this belief and its disbelief equally plausible. To those who do believe in an afterlife, I won't tell you to stop believing. You have every right to believe what you want, and I support that right. I'm explaining here why I disagree with that position.

Nah the next moment until you die is this life .you were talking about a life after physical death of the Current body . And the only evidence is what, just hope ? My view is less, "there is no next life ," and more, "who knows." For example..If you imagine you had never slept before and someone tried to explain what dreaming is, it would sound crazy. There would be no concrete evidence for or against it, except what other people say about it. This comparison falls apart in that people sleep and dream every night and can tell each other about it afterwards, but with death that simply isn't the case. Again, I'm not trying to argue for or against the existence of an afterlife. I just want to point out that in matters where you can't quantifiably measure things, matters like next life souls, and afterlifes, you can't prove or disprove things.

Not sure about sexuality . Your sexuality is highly dependent on your genetics. Also whether you are a male or female obviously depends on your genitals. So I don't think it's a social construct .it's all determined by biology. Society plays a role .but it's secondary. Biology comes first .

What next life ?