>>You create your own reality every second. The separation
>>between the external reality and the internal one is an illusion.

>I disagree.  I don't create any reality.  Rather, I experience reality and am a
>part of reality.  My experience is a subset of my existence.  

>>It's
>>an illusion we need to maintain, though, because intellectually we
>>cannot conceive of the relationship.

> It is not an illusion, but a necessity of biological survival.  If you want a
>vivid example of how "what is currently Bernie" is an existing state and not an
>illusion, try breathing under water.

>>The separation actually allows us
>>to become self-conscious, because awareness learns to distinguish
>>between "what is me" and "what is not me", but that's just at the
>>early stage. At a later stage, we need to free ourselves from this
>>illusion, to realize how everything is really interdependent and how
>>there is no real separation between, say, you and me.
>But, Bernie, there is a separation between you and me.  You are wherever you
>are, I'm wherever I am.    Consciousness may simply be a point of reference, or
>a path of trajectory, or whatever, but they are >different< points of
>references or paths of trajectory.  While the set of things that define me from
>beginning to end have much in common with the sets of things that define a lamp
>post from its beginning to end or Steve Guttenberg from his beginning to end,
>all have--to varying degrees--much in common, they are not in fact the same.

>There is a distinct set of ME, however tenuous, and, therefore, boundaries that
>define that set in the same way that banks define rivers or rivers define
>banks.  To say that there is no difference between a river and its bank, or
>matter and energy, or life and death, to say that "all things are one," is
>quite lofty and Buddha-like, and quite a calming thing to remember when you
>have trouble getting your mortgage payment together, but really doesn't have
>any value beyond that.