The thing that puzzles me is - why do we have to make ourselves believe in A versus B in the first place, if A and B are things that we don't have any observable and conclusive evidence of that either of them is true, or more true than the other?
Instead of just preferring which one we would like to be true (like in the book "The Life of Pi"), why can't we just hold belief in abeyance? If one does that, then one can usually look at things with a more open mind and a much less cluttered paradigm.
Whereas Pi had a very good reason for believing in an imagined story rather than the brutal and agonising reality, most people don't usually have to believe in anything. Pi's irrational belief probably saved his sanity - it enabled him to escape reality yet still be able to function as part of this world - whereas we are not usually put in such a predicament.

So why do we seem to persist in living in an illusion - in Ahamkara?

-IainB (April 27, 2015, 01:51 AM)

The simple answer is that our brains lie to us. Despite our significant neurological advantage in complexity and capability, at the end of the day, nearly every judgement we make about anything is guided by the same built in conditioning that caused Pavlov's dogs to salivate when he rang a bell. On one hand, it's an evolutionary advantage. It allows us to make the kind of snap decisions necessary for survival. On the other hand, it is (just as you suggest) the single biggest obstacle to intellectual honesty because it's inherently guided by emotion.

Ironically, even those of us who do tend more toward rationality and self examination are still being guided by emotion. Those thoughts, or, more importantly, the outcomes produced by that view of things, produces positive emotions.

Based on your brief explanation from that link, I'd say the concept of Ahamkara is a good demonstration of why science was treated as an offshoot of philosophy for so much of human history. The phenomenon it identifies are the focus of much neurological and anthropological research today.

Uh, what else? I'm really into music and I love everything from Jazz to Hip-Hop to Metal to Breaks to Classical and everything in-between. I collect headphones and build A/V ICs for friends. Right now, I'm listening to some Fats Domino through my AKG K7XX. Before that it was Biggie, and before that it was some Bach. Next up is a Nina Simone album called To Love Somebody.

-wut?! (April 24, 2015, 10:29 PM)

Funny you should mention Fats Domino and Bach. I play bass, and I've got my son (a drummer) working on learning I'm Walking, although my favorite of his is probably Blue Monday. Some time in the near future we'll be shifting gears to some Bach - well, sort of...