Soul merging and -splitting (esoterical mysticism)

[Liquid Len]

Who in here believes that individual souls can merge into one soul and that souls can split into individual daughter souls?

To most people it sounds awfully nonsensical at first sight, but in fact many people do believe in such an esoterical concept.
They think they can become one with God by meditating and reaching mystical states of mind. They also believe that all souls are split off "pieces" of God's soul. When I was younger I used to find such a concept quite appealing. On the one hand it would allow the existence of souls, i.e. that we are more than just physical, biological beings who came into existence by mere chance. On the other hand it finally doesn't presuppose an almighty father in heaven, at least not in the traditional sense, because after all, he would be basically the very same soul as myself - so in a sense, I would be God, and everybody else would be God, too. To put it simple: It looks like a way to reconcile some sort of atheism with the belief in souls.

In my opinion, it's impossible, though.
I'll tell you why.

Of course it's fully conceivable what it would be like to me to merge with another soul. To me, basically nothing would change. Except that I suddenly would have access to the contents of someone else's consciousness. Furthermore I could imagine that this other person doesn't exist anymore as a separate soul that is different from mine, i.e. that formerly two souls have really become one.

In the same way I could imagine how I become one with God, while other persons continue to exist individually.
We have of course to allow the possibility that others merge with God too, while I'm being one with God (there might be several mystics meditating at the same time).
Now, during this state of being one, during this state of "oneness", there are no distinctions within the divine soul, because whoever is one with God... is God - and all who are one with God are therefore identical to each other. Therefore all concerned consciousnesses are reduced to one. From my subjective view: To mine!

So far it's, as I said, conceivable.

The severe problems start if we try to imagine how from this state again several distinct souls and consciousnesses reemerge. (After a while the mystic state is over and the mystic's consciousness becomes normal again.) Because: What exactly determines as which mystic I'll be coming back? The problem here isn't that I necessarily would have to reawake as the same mystic in the same body as before. (If I reawaked as someone else, completely with this other person's memories, and without my former ones, I wouldn't notice that something was going wrong.) The problem is rather the question what exactly determines as who and when I'll reemerge, because as long as this can't be made clear, it seems completely accidental. In fact, it's not even clear why I'll reemerge at all, as, in the state of oneness, I could be forever one with God. The seperations and unfoldings of individual souls thereupon, in which I logically can exactly only once be subjectively involved seem utterly accidental. Just try to imagine: You are God. And out of yourself there are individual souls constantly unfolding. And all of a sudden, without an apparent cause, it's dragging yourself along, and suddenly you're not God anymore, but only an individual soul. Why? When? Why not earlier? And why at all? In other words: How could it be possible that conscious individual souls seperate themselves from yourself for a while without a problem, without diminishing your being God, and how could it be, that, after all, you become by chance an individual soul again?

As long as this can't be made clear, the whole concept remains totally unconvincing. Saying that it just happens sometime by chance, would be too unsatisfactory.

[kwalka]

I think the problem is more with your understanding of mysticism. You repeatedly talk about "separating from yourself" - why must you necesarily lose your self in order to acheive unity with everything else? If everyone lost their selves, then what would this be a unity of? The concept of unity of being exists in a world where things are differentiated by nature - the most you can hope for while you are in this state are glimpses of god-conciousness.
Now yes, some will argue that even physically we are not really separated, and that this is just an illusion, something we build up in our minds in order to function. Okay, granted - then when you come out of the state of god-conciousness, you're not really separate again - you're still connected anyway, you're just no longer concious of it. Mysticism is and always has been about conciousness - no actual separation or unification actually takes place, you just become more aware of the place of yourself and everything else in the world. And a sane person cannot maintain that state for a long period of time - that's where things like lsd, peyote, etc come in.

[Liquid Len]

kwalka said:

I think the problem is more with your understanding of mysticism.

What I wrote isn't about mysticism in general, but only about one specific view, namely, that there is really a seperation and unification.

kwalka said:

You repeatedly talk about "separating from yourself" - why must you necesarily lose your self in order to acheive unity with everything else?

I speak of "seperating from yourself" only once, and there it is about others who are seperating themselves in the process of individual unfolding. So exactly in the opposite process from achieving unity.

kwalka said:

why must you necesarily lose your self in order to acheive unity with everything else?
If everyone lost their selves, then what would this be a unity of?

When I was talking about the achieving of unity, I said that to me, subjectively, nothing would change and that all involved consciousnesses would be reduced to mine.

How can you equate this with a "losing myself"?

Possibly you were confused by my description of the problem how to become the right person again, afterwards. But the problem here isn't a separation from myself, because subjectively I remain myself. The problem is that in God there is no distinction between all the persons who have achieved the unity.

kwalka said:

The concept of unity of being exists in a world where things are differentiated by nature - the most you can hope for while you are in this state are glimpses of god-conciousness.

Well, now it would be necessary to explain the difference of such a glimps to the view I was talking about. If it's really something else, something much less far going, without reaching a complete unity, it isn't affected by what I wrote.

kwalka said:

when you come out of the state of god-conciousness, you're not really separate again - you're still connected anyway, you're just no longer concious of it. Mysticism is and always has been about conciousness - no actual separation or unification actually takes place, you just become more aware of the place of yourself and everything else in the world.

The view that there is no seperation and that our normal view of the world is a kind of illusion, is obviously a very different interpretation of mysticism, and exemplified, for instance, by Zen-Buddhism.
I wrote about that in another thread.

dodona.proboards35.com/index.cgi?board=philosophy&action=display&thread=1132328894

kwalka said:

a sane person cannot maintain that state for a long period of time

But if we're assuming that the unification is complete, and that there is no distinction between yourself and God anymore - why shouldn't you be able to remain God forever? Because of your body? But what exactly differentiates this particular body from all the other bodies in the world, if you are one with God?