### Why do we conceive ourselves as apart from the rest of the universe? (David Darling) We need to remember also that one of the brain’s tricks is to conceive of itself as an individual, as something apart from the rest of the universe. That was an inevitable outcome of its acquired survival skill of labeling and analyzing the world around it. The brain habitually thinks of itself as a discrete unit. But to grasp the true situation, we need to switch to holistic vision. We need to conceive of our brains, not in isolation, not as belonging uniquely to “us”, but as an inseparable aspect of the universe – for that is what we are. Ten billions years ago, the atoms now temporarily patterned as your body and mine were strewn across many cubic light-years of the Galaxy. By chance they came together in an interstellar cloud and were then further condensed into the material of the Earth, debris left over from the Sun’s formation. For billions more years they combined and split apart and recombined in multifarious ways with other atoms in the Earth’s crust, some of them occasionally drifting in and out of the anatomies of other animals and plants. Almost certainly, a few of the atoms now helping you to interpret these words were, for a brief spell, incorporated in some dinosaur or Carboniferous fern and, well before that, the deep interior of a monstrous star. Each particle of your substance has a unique and fabulous tale to tell. From Equations of Eternity, David Darling (1993), PP179-180.
Posted on: Mon, 20 Jan 2014 17:29:16 +0000
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