I’m a brain-injury survivor, so this question is something I’ve had to face.
Now, after my 3rd-wave of braindamage ( this one self-inflicted, as I tried to break will-to-live from my brain, with a cudgel, so that murdering my life could happen. Failed. it’s fine: it was just part of my hellish growing-up process, these past 6-ish decades ) I’ve BAD memory problems.
Here’s the key:
When you come-to in a dream, without your normal-life’s memories, are you still you??
Elegant, isn’t it?
Completely bypasses most of the dead-ends of the question…
“yes I’m still me, even without my memories, because…”
because why?
I’ve learned that it isn’t one’s memories that make one oneself:
… rather, it is one’s instincts which do.
IF anybody puts drugs into my body-life to alter my personality, and they alter my instincts, THEN they have obliterated the someone that had been inhabiting this-life, & induced a drugged-replacement for the someone who inhabited it, before.
IF any experience alters the instincts of the personality who inhabits this-life, THEN that experience has replaced the less-experienced someone with a ( somewhat? ) different more-experienced someone.
Even without memories, so long as my instincts are clean ( unadulterated ), & MINE, then “I” am existing.
So, even in dreams, when I appear/come-to suddenly in some random context, with no memory of any other life, my instincts make me me, see?
The simple fact that I still work to face-into karma, that I still work to challenge abuse, that I still work to make things right, that I’m still careful with meanings & words, relentlessly,
THAT is what makes “me” me.
It took decades of brain-injury to notice the fact that normal dreams oft have me not remember anything from my normal life…
But once noticed, then anybody who has such dreams can understand the principle/truth of it.
I’m a brain-injury survivor, so this question is something I’ve had to face.
Now, after my 3rd-wave of braindamage ( this one self-inflicted, as I tried to break will-to-live from my brain, with a cudgel, so that murdering my life could happen. Failed. it’s fine: it was just part of my hellish growing-up process, these past 6-ish decades ) I’ve BAD memory problems.
Here’s the key:
When you come-to in a dream, without your normal-life’s memories, are you still you??
Elegant, isn’t it?
Completely bypasses most of the dead-ends of the question…
“yes I’m still me, even without my memories, because…”
because why?
I’ve learned that it isn’t one’s memories that make one oneself:
… rather, it is one’s instincts which do.
IF anybody puts drugs into my body-life to alter my personality, and they alter my instincts, THEN they have obliterated the someone that had been inhabiting this-life, & induced a drugged-replacement for the someone who inhabited it, before.
IF any experience alters the instincts of the personality who inhabits this-life, THEN that experience has replaced the less-experienced someone with a ( somewhat? ) different more-experienced someone.
Even without memories, so long as my instincts are clean ( unadulterated ), & MINE, then “I” am existing.
So, even in dreams, when I appear/come-to suddenly in some random context, with no memory of any other life, my instincts make me me, see?
The simple fact that I still work to face-into karma, that I still work to challenge abuse, that I still work to make things right, that I’m still careful with meanings & words, relentlessly,
THAT is what makes “me” me.
It took decades of brain-injury to notice the fact that normal dreams oft have me not remember anything from my normal life…
But once noticed, then anybody who has such dreams can understand the principle/truth of it.
_ /\ _