The Mind-Body Problem

version

Well-known member
I dunno whether I've always felt this way, or just after I started taking psychedelics, but I often get the feeling of being trapped by having a physical body, like there's a ball and chain holding me down or I'm tethered to something. It's quite distressing. There isn't really any way out. If you believe in life after death then suicide may be an option, but you'd have to take it on faith and hope it isn't a case of the mind very much being one with the body, or the mind at least requiring the body in order to avoid dissipating like a gas.

Anyone very much convinced they're either separate or one and the same?
 

luka

Well-known member
these days you're supposed to think of it all as one thing. Blake said there is no soul distinct from the body. but its quite hard to think in that way. all our language and habits of thought are dualisitic so more often that not you will be running in those grooves.
 

luka

Well-known member
i;ve always resented having to keep feeding the mule, cutting its toenails, brushing its teeth, pissing, shitting. all that stuff is a drag. i dont mind sleeping though.
 

luka

Well-known member
and then there's the getting old thing which you wont hit for another few years but that can get distressing. tethered to a dying animal etc
 

version

Well-known member
I dunno whether it's the same for everyone else, but it's not just the body I find a weight. It's everything external. It all feels like something I'm trapped within.
 

luka

Well-known member
sometimes i quite like it i guess. other times i don't. it can feel quite exciting being up on Blackheath and seeing the sun sinking in the corner of the sky and the curve of the earth and getting that sense of being on a huge spinning ball. it depends if i can make the world come to life and infuse it with being or if it is becoming dull and dead or even sinister and threatening.
 

version

Well-known member
Do you feel it's real? I sometimes find myself talking to a family member or whoever and thinking "Who is this person?" or touching a wall or object, feeling it, but remaining unconvinced. I can feel the wall, but what does that mean?
 

luka

Well-known member
often i think its made of cardboard. in my experience if the world is a bad place to be it means one of two things, i need to lay off the drugs for a loooong time (a year or so) or it means i need to take some drugs.
 

luka

Well-known member
last winter was one of the worst time of my life. the environment was actively hostile.
 

version

Well-known member
I tried some of the experiments in Ulysses. Stephen shutting his eyes on the beach, Aristotle's crossed fingers, but they don't really get you any closer.
 

luka

Well-known member
i had these buzzing sounds in my head which ive always had to a degree but its usually been a fairly stable pitch which is not sort of fine but this kept changing and disrupting my brain all the time it was terrible and i couldnt sleep and as soon as i went to bed i had to keep touching my head my head felt wrong like i was under psychic attack from The Enemy.
 

version

Well-known member
I don't buy the brain in a vat projecting the whole thing argument. I don't think I would be able to project everything I've encountered, but that assumes the brain in the vat is the same as the one I believe is in my head and we aren't all part of some collective consciousness that's become convinced it's lots and lots of individual ones.
 

version

Well-known member
A bit like those quotes I pulled from Count Zero re: Virek's wealth and body,
"Aspects of my wealth have become autonomous, by degrees; at times they even war with one another. Rebellion in the fiscal extremities."
"I speak as one who can no longer tolerate that simple state, the cells of my body have opted for the quixotic pursuit of individual careers."
 
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