> You have a body but you're not your body

Not only that, but you're you because you're not someone else's body. That sounds tautological but I think it's important. I think a big part of what gives someone consciousness is identity, and what gives us identity, is the idea of us being an island isolotated within our body and therefore distinct from other conciousnesses.

Which sounds pointless, but I think it's actually significant if you start to consider the eventual effect of identity on "shared consciousness" via technologically-enabled telepathy, which we may actually see one day in the far future.

Perhaps consciousness is shared, only memory isn't, and the distinction is mere an illusion due to distinct memory. Perhaps that's how aiming to be "self-less" is a thing in Buddhism, Sufism, Zen, etc.

Makes sense if you think about memory in the same way you think about time, as creations of the mind.

I read somewhere once about a story written in a book. The beginning and the end is there, everything superimposed together. For the characters in the book, there is no time.

Then the reader's mind/consciousness comes along and goes through the book, page-by-page. By this very act he creates memory and time. Maybe our minds are doing the same thing on an infinite, timeless substrate that Buddhism, Sufism, Zen etc call awareness.

I'd say perception is more relevant to the experience of unique identity than memory; I only see out of my eyes, which makes me feel separate from those around me, even if we'd have lived through all the same experiences.

I'm not sure perception and memory are all that different. What are memories except echoes of perception? I actually wonder if memory is not our perceptual signals caught within neural loops that are able to feedback and trigger pattern detection circuits. When this happens for multiple patterns in synchrony, we form associations. Is it right? Who knows.. no idea how even neuroscience can start to answer that..

Dr. Charles Tart's experiment with "mutual hypnosis" had some startling implications. (Search for “Psychedelic Experiences Associated with a Novel Hypnotic Procedure, Mutual Hypnosis.” there's a PDF but I don't want to link to it, as I don't know its provenance. See also http://skepdic.com/tart.html)

One could flip it - There's no matter, only awareness. All awareness, when devoid of the body, the thoughts, emotions, memories, are identical.

Now, make that leap, where `identical == expressing an identity`, where it is all one universal awareness, and that is reality.

You now have a pass to:

Hindu (Brahman):

"Brahman (/brəhmən/; ब्रह्मन्) connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe."[1]

Islam (Allah):

"He is Allah, the one and only. God, The Eternal, the Absolute. He begot not, nor was He begotten, and there is none comparable to. Him."

Reality created nothing, nor was reality created.[2]

Taoism (Tao)

"The unnamable is the eternally real... Free from desire, you realize the mystery. Caught in desire, you see only the manifestations.... mystery and manifestations arise from the same source....." [3]

Mystery = presence & essence, manifestation = matter, stuff, things, objects.

Christianity (Holy Spirit)

If you must, think of Adam and Eve as the first two self-aware beings, and "fruit of the tree of knowledge" as using their special ability for the benefit of their own ego, at the expense of being one with the universe, like all other plants and "lesser" animals. A.k.a "The original sin". In Taoist terms, Adam and Eve stopped seeing the mystery, and full of desire, saw the manifestations, and that's when they were 'cast out of the garden'. One moment perfectly content, next moment cannot ever stop wanting 'more'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brahman

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al-Haqq

[3] http://acc6.its.brooklyn.cuny.edu/~phalsall/texts/taote-v3.h...

Religion is about shattering the idea that one is separate from the rest of reality.

> religion is about shattering the idea that one is separate from the rest of reality.

Wait. My main issue with religion is that it forces the belief that one is separate from source/God/universe and creates a life long relationship of separation thus perverting humanity's relationship with ourselves and with our own "sacredness" or "divinity" in order to become a middleman to and sell something that was never separate from us. It's really insidious from that standpoint.

unless we speak of Daoism or Advaita, both nondualistic practices, both nonreligious.

That is mysticism (direct experiential knowledge), not religion which can serve many masters.

I agree with the rest of your post.

The main problem with the article is that it doesn't acknowledge that matter is a mystery and we don't know what matter is.

So, reducing consciousness to matter doesn't eliminate the mystery.

But why are we talking about this in terms of "mysteries"? We'll always be able to reduce things down to a level where we don't know how it works. Right now, sure, we don't know what makes matter matterial, but for the purposes of the consciousness conversation, is that relevant? Just because we don't understand why electrons are electrons, does that prevent us from understanding how electricity works? "Consciousness" is an emergent property of our incredibly complex neurological infrastructure; just because we don't understand why the atomic components of that infrastructure doesn't mean that the emergent property has some "mysterious" aspect any more than anything else does.

> Now, if that awareness created or creates the physical world (as the Bhagavad Gita seems to state) that would be pretty amazing [...]

Where else would it come from? If we break a conventionally physical object into smaller and smaller bits we find that: 1) There's mostly nothing there - a whole lotta nothing inside of most "stuff", and 2) What is there seems to simply be a (very fast) movement, and doesn't follow the behavior of conventional objects. Whatever it is probably can't even properly be described as noun-stuff doing verb-stuff.

So, there appears to be something out there, but if in fact there is, it clearly isn't made out of conventional objects. That "objectivization" and the languageing of the objects of awareness is created in awareness. Who is the master who makes the grass green and all that...

The Upanishads describe consciousness with amazing realizations about self.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upanishads

https://www.amazon.com/Upanishads-Classic-Indian-Spiritualit...

> Now, if that awareness created or creates the physical world (as the Bhagavad Gita seems to state) that would be pretty amazing and I'd love to read about it.

I am not surprised that the top comment in HN, in 2016, is that of pro-solipsism ... given its recent proclivity towards all things spiritual over rational.

Well, I'm surprised. :-)

Where do you get solipsism from what I said?

That sounds great but it ignores a possible and compelling explanation. We are aware because nature selected for awareness. Why? Perhaps because of free will being a powerful tool for survival.