Even within the confines of one human's skin, countless selves exist and countless deaths and rebirths occur even in a single day.
As the ancient philosopher Heraclitus wrote, "No man ever walks across the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man."
The symptom of the ego that most reveals its non-reality is its singularity, meaning the imaginary view that around the time and place of human birth a singular real being (e.g. a 'soul') pops into existence and then at human death pops out of existence.
The human brain imagines as if there was a little guy or gal sitting in a control room inside the brain throughout the human life, in charge of and running everything. And the brain imagines that little singular guy or gal in the control room is you, the real you. But that's little guy or gal is actually the ego, and it's a figment of imagination, meaning an oversimplifiying construct of the mind. It covers up this scientifically verifiable truth: All humans have split-personality disorder to some degree, except it's not a disorder per se since it is universal to all humans.
That is why a human often feels and notice seeming battles going on within themselves, or can literally argue with themselves out loud, in their inner monologue, or while dreaming at night. That is also why unrealistic fictional depictions of so-called multiple personality disorder are so relatable to us all despite being unrealistic dramatizations that would misrepresent any actual condition if taken as being more literally accurate and scientifically true than Spiderman. Those depictions don't show what a person with actual dissociative identity disorder goes through or has; they show what all of us go through.
It's actually much more true and reflective of real reality when we say something like, "he's not himself when he's angry", versus when we say, "He is himself, singular, throughout his one human life and only that human life. That single one true self pops into existence at human birth and pops out afterwards. Each human has one self, and each self has one human."
The real truth about the real you is even deeper: Insofar as you are ever yourself, meaning your one singular true self, then you are always yourself, even when you are me, even when you are not human. Spiritually, we are all one, and the word we in this sentence is a misnomer due to its plurality.
In contrast, in the sense that anything is divided and that anything divided can remain real, then everything is divided and can be and in a way already is divided even further, at least until you reach the level of quarks and electrons and the Plank scale. Then even humans and dining room chairs are a conceptual fiction that oversimplifies the reality of it all just being a pile of individual quarks and electrons. The thinghood of anything, at least beyond elementary particles, is then a form of imagination, of modeling things in an oversimplified. Creation (e.g. birth) starts, destruction (e.g. death), stops, and thinghood (e.g. a single full life) are just conceptual ways to map up a smooth continuum of change/difference in a vast objectively timeless changeless block universe. When does one era start and another stop? Where and when does one thing stop being and another different thing reborn in its image start being? These are just arbitrary imaginary conceptual lines used to oversimplify a vaster undivided and truly indivisible timeless reality.
Insofar as the human species has more than one self, then likewise any given single human has more than self. Just like a big huge for-profit corporation with millions of employees has millions of individual selves, so too does any human have countless different selves within it.
The real you is vast and singular beyond imagination, and the false yous are divi
Put another way: Your true self is vast and singular beyond imagination, and your countless co-existing false selves are plural and divisible beyond imagination. The real is unfathomably unified and singular; the false and conceptual is unfathomably divided and divisible.
Love your selves, all your beautiful false selves, both as they exist as oversimplified conceptual models in your imagination and as the real infinitely depths of complexity held within those concepts. And, also, remember who and what you really are. Remember the real you. Remember that your spirit and my spirit are the same one spirit and that spirit is you.
With love,
Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."
I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
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