Buddhism: Water in a Glass and Oneness

a little thought experiment in oneness

You've probably seen movies like "Freaky Friday".  Two people are cursed, or touch a magic object, and overnight they find they have swapped bodies, with usually humorous results, and at the end they learn a lesson about themselves and things get put right.

Of course, to make it interesting, these movies cheat a bit.  The characters take their brains with them .. so its not a complete swap of bodies .. its just body-less-brain.

Imagine, now, if we did the job properly.

One morning you and your friend wake up, but you had magically swapped bodies *including* your brains.  The whole sack of skin that you call 'you'.

That would mean, when you woke up, you would have all your friend's memories and experiences.  You would have all her beliefs.  You would have all her emotions.  You would have all her thoughts.  You would have her little voice in your head narrating what was going on.  You would have no memory of 'you', as that memory is still in your body within your brain, your friend would be experiencing 'you' instead.

What would be the result of this change?

There would really be no difference at all.  Noone else would see it.  You would not see it.  It would be as if nothing happened.

That is why they don't do that in the movies.  Two people waking up and still being who they were the day before wouldn't be terrible interesting as a plot.

So why would it be as if nothing happened?

Because nothing *did* happen.

Let me give you another little thought experiment to explain.

Imagine you have a green glass and a red glass, each with water in it.  The water in the green glass looks green.  The water in the red glass looks red.  If you swap the water from one glass to another, there is no difference: the water now in the green glass looks green and the water now in the red glass looks red.   That's because the water is clear and pure and there is no difference between the water in one glass and the water in another: it is all the one water, just in different glasses.

Your consciousness and your friends consciousness are not separate independent entities.  You are the one consciousness in two different bodies.  After you swap you are *still* one consciousness in two different bodies.  Being in different bodies means the you have different experiences, different memories, different thoughts.  You end up thinking you are really separate individuals, but that is just an illusion within our brains that we call 'ego'. 

We are the one consciousness manifesting in different bodies; we are the same clear and pure water in different glasses.

One day, your glass will crack and break and can no longer hold the water.  That same water is still in every other glass.  The part of the water that was in your glass flows to another new glass; another new body to experience.  Nothing is lost.

Reviews

[MAD ENGLISHMAN]

What happens when i look in the mirror and see my friend staring back. or have i missed the point.

[Rogie-Dodge]

The point is, you won't know that you aren't you. Everything in your skin-bag of squishiness that your ego refers to in order to define itself .. the memories and beliefs will all be saying "that's me" when they see your friend in the mirror. Our inner essence is the one essence, whatever eyes it looks out of is who it thinks it is.

Perhaps a way to imagine it is someone being given a mirror for the first time .. and the look in it and see their face and see some pimples and blue eyes and a tiny nose .. so they tell their friend "Hey, look at the pimply blue eyed tiny nosed person in here" and give their friend the mirror .. and the friend says "What do you mean .. its a clear skinned brown eyed big nosed person there". But its the one mirror.

When that one essence that is in you, and in me, looks out through our mind, it fools us into thinking that it is really different people.

[MAD ENGLISHMAN]

OK. But if we retain our memories won't they include the previous image of ourselves. OR are you saying that our inner essence will over ride the memories we've gathered along our journey to that point.

[Rogie-Dodge]

If we swap bodies, the bodies include the brains where the memories are. So we will only (in our new body) only have the memories that that body came with. We won't know any better than to believe we are that new body. And the point is that the essence is the same .. we're not really swapping anything when we swap into different bodies. If you swap the sock on your feet, you're still wearing the same socks and the sock are still on the one person. Swapping into different bodies is the same thing :D