An Answer to the Koan

[sdi]

If you identify with your body, then everyone is separate from you. If you identify with your soul, then everyone is your brothers and sisters. If you identify with the Intellect, then everyone is you. If you identify with the One, then there is nobody at all, not even you.

Comments

amisso

[kallianeira]

Hello Brother Soul,

Intriguing and pleasing answer you have given.

I am on my way to work - wanted to look more at Porohyry's lette to Marcella om my mobile device - and amissio.net has just amissio-ed! An accident of the name affecting the essence?

Nice puzzle for me anyway.

l

[boccaderlupo]

This one has struck something with me, particularly that last bit—I'm not sure I entirely agree, but then it's something I've got to meditate on some more.

But my reasoning is mathematical more than anything else. I know Edward Butler's polycentric take on Proclean metaphysics stresses the recondite nature of The One (almost, IMHO, to the breaking point), but this would suggest that The One is 0, which for me always means "The Void," an absence. I associate The One with 1 itself—unity, in that this number is part of all numbers, with the exception (?) of 0 (which, in spite of modern insinuations, I don't regard as a number, but rather as absence).

But that's about the full extent of my thinking on this subject, for now. Good thought-provoking post.