WHOSE LIFE IS IT ANYWAY?

The earliest reference to solipsism in Hindu philosophy is in the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, dated to early 1st millennium BCE.  There it is held that the mind is the only god and that all actions in the universe are the result of the mind assuming infinite forms.

Non-dualistic Advaita Vedanta and the dualistic Samkhya sects are thought to have originated concepts similar to solipsism.

Solipsism, in its metaphysical sense, says that the world and other minds do not exist.  Only a person’s own mind and own life exists. 

The notion arises when a person has experiences that ring so true to him, that are so intimate to him, that they seem to be coming from his own mind.  A person may even conclude that the entire world is somehow being generated by his own mind.  

Such uncanny experiences as, for instance, synchronicity, the so-called spotting a familiar face in a crowd when such a sighting is impossible, or nearly so, makes solipsism feel all the more likely.  The person says, “Only I spotted John Smith in those masses,” which then leads him to believe that he is the only one spotting not just a particular individual but everything in the world.

Psychiatry has this as a dissociative disorder, but is it?  How do we know, for sure, that our own life is not the only one?  Who can say, unequivocally, that he or she is not someone else’s life?

Philosopher Alan Watts liked to joke, “But whose life is it that we are all living, yours or mine?”