like the brain is literally encased in the body so how can it be separate? like if you go around licking lamp posts you’re going to pick up some germ that’s gonna make you feel like crap and you get insomnia or fever and your brain will definitely be impacted. and so you’ll have short temper and that’ll get you into trouble.
It’s because of mind-body dualism. Most people have absorbed some amount of mysticism from the culture around them without realizing it, and a distressing amount of Western mystic traditions have some form of mind-body or spirit-body dualism.
True, and nondual traditions like tantric Buddhism, Advaita Vedanta, and Kashmir Shivism really have a leg up in that regard, but Descartes really cemented it as the supposed “objective” fact (lol) that it is today.
The root problem though is the felt sense of separation the mind creates but that mystical experiences can dissolve.
Because the brain seems to think it is not a part of the body.
Source: Brain told me to type this.
Who thinks that?
Even little kids know that if you get too hungry or tired you aren’t going to be able to do a complex task.
I put it like this: if you replaced any other part, or even all your other parts with machines, you’d still be (what you think of as) you… because your brain would still be in there.
There is, however, no replacing the brain. If your brain goes, you go with it. You are your brain.
Descartes, and Protestantism.
