Why, It is You and I

We talked about the infinity that you are in another page (experience infinity for yourself!). Yet, our daily experience suggests otherwise. Many outspoken scientists and thinkers insist that the self is an illusion, that there is no free will (here is a recent example). We seem to be living in a material, physical world. Fair enough, but we keep getting the message that we are each limited, separated bodies with a very short life span. Even when you hear that thought in your own head, I suggest that you do not believe it. 

Well, many of us including some of my friends seem to believe all that. And, who knows, maybe they are onto something. But, let us get into it and question it a bit. Let us indeed start with the body. Body is like a piece of hardware that we can hold in our hands like a smartphone, a TV, a computer or the servers that make up the internet and the cloud. Don't you agree? It's got moving parts: physical, chemical, biochemical, biological. Not quite hard, but in a sense, just like well-designed hardware. Extremely well designed. It apparently took billions of years to evolve to this level of ability and complexity. The body is indeed very capable, very agile (my kitten is even more agile), very powerful. Yet we know that its power is limited. Its eyes can't see as far as telescopes or as tiny as microscopes. We can't use it to jump to the moon. We need to make sure it has air supply without a break, water, food and warmth, or cooling, as much as needed. 

It takes a lot to keep the body going. Universe pulled out a miraculous feat not only to engineer and design the current form, but also gave it a wonderfully suitable ecosystem, our beautiful planet Earth. And using science, we did a great job of explaining most of how that came about. Yet, there are some open questions as basic as: how did the first DNA come about, the first cell? How did the big-bang come about? Out of what? There are many such wondrous questions and a big wide universe to explore. 

But, that's not all. The body comes with not just two legs and arms, but also a nervous system including the most sophisticated machine in the universe we call the brain which fits inside our skulls and sends out its motor and sensory neurons to the rest of the body. So far, we can conclude that the brain is part of the hardware we call the body. 

Let's expand our analogy. Your smartphone would be of no good use without all the apps you have on it (except for using it as a brick). And none of the apps could work for you without the OS, the operating system that manages them all. The OS and all the apps are what we call software. Google and Facebook, etc.. are all primarily software companies that keep writing more and more and better and better software to do amazing things like search and find, connect, so on. All that software depends on good hardware, but, they go beyond the limited hardware and provide us a never ending stream of services and products.

All of that is of course for our minds to consume. We hold the smartphone in our hands and look at it using our eyes and touch it with our fingers and hear the sounds with our ears, in short we use our hardware (the body) to access the hardware we call the smartphone and all the software on it. The software that seems to be running in our brains, we call the mind. I hope this convinces you that your mind, or mine, is not the brain. The mind is the software but the brain is only part of the hardware. What about you? You and I, we use the mind which uses the body. That makes us the user. That's not surprising, is it?

We are not hardware.

We are neither the software.

We are aware.

Hardware, the body, is indeed limited, though, the universe is quite large and we can get more and more hardware..

Software, the mind, is truly unlimited. There is no end to the number of apps in the App store or the Play store. The mind is even greater. 

You and I each, on top of all that,  are truly a miracle containing an infinity. Greater than infinity. Some say God. Are they wrong? 

Remember that we know that you and I exist. Or at least I trust that you've proved it for yourself and you know that you exist. You are real. If in doubt, please go back and check here (proof for you). Now, we see that you contain an infinity, the infinite mind. You might object saying that my mind is separate than yours. Are you positive? When we talk and connect, learn from each other, do they not connect and become one? 

Many, including my kids, seem to believe that god is just a story humans have been telling themselves and each other. Stories are stories. Ergo, god is not real. We are not going to discuss what God is or what God is not. But, we can each consider the facts we've seen for ourselves: You exist. You are real. You contain an infinity without any bounds. Classic myths talk about demigods, you know, mortal humans with an immortal father (usually Zeus) or an immortal mother (like Aphrodite or Artemis or Athena.) Afterall, they are myths. But, solid truth seems to be hiding in them. You are not only a user, a messenger of the Infinity, but you are necessarily One with That. Do you know that now? Well, knowledge helps. But, the point is to feel it. Live it. Go on. Enjoy life. Cherish it. Celebrate it. Share it. Help heal. Love. It may not be all on you, but it is all on You. 

PS. If this feels too much, impractical or unreasonable, please go on and check the page on Unreasonable?