1.4.2021

W reviews his dilemma with his teacher, "I am a student. I have a body and mind. I sense the world. I am able to watch how my mind assimilates, imagines, and confabulates to create my world, my beliefs, my joys, and my suffering. I have strong emotions. I feel pain. I am soothed by a cup of tea. I know all of this is real."

"And yet?" The teacher asks with a tilt of the head.

"And yet," W continues, "deep in meditation the solidity of the world seems to dissolve. The mask of humanity is removed and it seems possible that the whole world may exist entirely inside my head. Further, my sense of 'me' seems to arise only when I have thoughts. Is my self-consciousness solely dependent on an elaborate mental feedback loop?"

"How else could you see yourself in the world?"

"Sometimes I try to imagine that instead of a mind housed in a body that I am really the silent visitor I have sensed lately, I am some out of body spiritual entity that now occupies me in order to experience material sensations. What if the world only began a moment ago when this conscious other being entered my mind?" W wonders for a moment and then continues, "I feel as if these two points of view are splitting me apart. Am I a human with a portal to the spiritual or is what I am experiencing also the experience of some immaterial energy enjoying the senses of a human body? Teacher, can I be both human and spirit simultaneously?"

The teacher smiles, "Is there truly a double you?"

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