You're gonna get different answers from different people and probably all we can offer is personal opinion.
To me, an individual is somebody who has accumulated enough life experience to base their actions and lifestyle on that experience instead of blindly following whatever fad happens to be popular.
Well we are all unique down here in this dream we called life, but when we get to the core, which is the soul, we are all ONE.
The character, or personality, is the ego. It is not real. It is a story you tell yourself about yourself with memory to back it up. It is all in your head. All imagination. Other people perceive you entirely differently and you really have little control over their ideas of who you are. You are GOD. I am GOD. This is a pool of souls that will merge into God at death and those who are fortunate enough to totally understand what I am saying are looking for what is called Self-Realiziation right here on earth before we die. That is the knowledge that you ARE God and there is no difference. You get quiet for long periods of time and concentrate on nothing and that still voice within can connect you to you. The Source of it all.
Sorry, Lemon, It's Sunday and I get really spiritual.
Hinduism[edit]
For the Hindu religion, self-realization (atma-jnana) is knowledge of the true self beyond both delusion and identification with material phenomena. It refers to self-identification and not ego identification.
Advaita Vedanta[edit]
The branch of Advaita Vedanta is the one that has particularly developed this concept.[3] According to Vedanta, God as Sat-Chit-Ananda is perfect existence, consciousness, bliss. Whereas the manifest universe which is a play of shakti or energy is temporal, the immutable principle or reality is beyond time. God is not exactly a being - in order for there to be being, there has to be non-being - and, it is said, that such dualism within the differentiated reality does not exist in that state. It cannot be described, quantified, reasoned, or explained all of which exist on a differentiated basis only directly experienced as itself. Shakti or energy, as an abstraction, is eternal but its manifestations are continually changing. Therefore, in Hinduism, God is represented in both male and female form. The male as sat-chit-anand is immutable; the female shakti is temporal. While being omnipresent and immanent in reality, sat-chit-anand is formless. Shakti is manifested but, also, exists in an unexpressed form inside of sat-chit-anand. Therefore, even if the Universe ceases to exist at one point, it will eventually be reborn because Shakti in an immaterial form is also eternal. What motivates the action is described more poetically as a dance or a play.
Life begins with consciousness. What makes an ant different from a rock is some sense of itself. Rather than existing purely causally, it has some degree of freedom, but the grosser awareness is more causally bound. In its pure form as sat-chit-anada, consciousness is said to be completely independent of causality. And therefore true freedom can only be realized in that state. Until then, the mind is bound to causal existence to greater and lesser extents. An awareness of self is present in grosser and subtler forms. Animals or even a microbe will have some form of awareness. However, in mankind, the ability to reason allows this base awareness to be refined into higher existential contemplation.
Vedanta describes the mind as being composed of sheaths or veils going from a gross awareness of self to a subtler awareness. Love - what we call love - is a very complex emotion described by as a feeling of empathy or compassion. The identification of one's self with others.
According to Vedanta, selfless love is actually an attribute of the self-realized. The mind shorn of its grossness is perfectly pure and, just like water poured from a jug into a pond mingles in an undifferentiated manner, so ultimately in nirvikalpa samadhi or enlightenment, there is a type of universal identification. This identification is not merely a delusion but actually a state of simultaneous experience. Yogis have described having a spherically expanding universal vision and a state of indescribable rapture. Scripture gives the metaphor of a voluminous lake overflowing with pure water. Paramahansa Yogananda, in his book Autobiography of a Yogi, describes this experience as realization of ever new joy. Self-realization is not easy to achieve and requires spiritual practice, sometimes over multiple life times.
One of the biggest reasons for this difficulty is that the thirst of the soul for material existence is not sated. Though realization is by far the greatest prize and the culmination of achievement, it is elusive. Prarabdha karma, the force of accumulated metaphysical causality, the impulses whose imprints or samskaras are in the mind where the subtle most human desires are the yearnings of the soul. Ramakrishna said that God himself has become all these forms. It is not his will that the play should come to an end. That's why self-realization is not easily achieved. Saint Jnaneshwar said that the play existed for the sport of God. It was all his forms and manifestations.
The yearnings or desires cause the soul to seek out new manifestations. At death, though the gross body and senses die, the causality of those desires does not die. It seeks out a new corporeal existence. If the motive force is good, then the bound soul will go to any number of heavens; if the motive force is bad, it will go into any number of hells. The place where it goes is precisely motivated by its own nature. Hell is a place where there is suffering and ignorance. Heaven is where there is pleasure or sensory enjoyment.
Neither residence in that heaven or hell, for the bound soul, is permanent. The soul (atman), while working off its previous karma, continually acquires new karma. Like a metal hammered with new impressions, in the course of a life, the actions we reinforce shape the quality of the mind and the subtlest part of the mind is the soul. Therefore, it is conceivable that if someone continually acquired bad karma by reinforcing bad actions they would remain in hell for a very long time. However, the soul can always be redeemed because there is the power of free will or independence from causality that originates from God himself.
Good and evil is equivalent to knowledge and ignorance. Knowledge is good. Ignorance is evil. Ignorance leads to suffering and bondage. Knowledge to happiness and liberation. The highest heaven is said to be self-realization because that state is eternal, evernew, pure, perfect, and rapturous. Therefore, it is considered to be better than any sensual heaven, such as those in the realms of the gods.
Self-realization is said[who?] to be achieved through 4 types of spiritual practices. Karma yoga - without attachment to the fruit of action, acting by offering the fruit of the action to God. In other words, the practice of wholesome actions, actions that are complete, that fulfill all aspects of the present moment, leaving one in a state of fulfillment, i.e. free from desire, until the next impulse arises. The aim of Karma yoga is to surrender the personal view of ahankara ("I am the doer") and to move towards a more universal appreciation of action as service (meeting the need without any claim). Raja yoga - psychic control or one pointed meditation that first focuses thought onto one point and then stops thought leaving only the underlying awareness. Bhakti yoga - the development of love for God and other beings. Jnana yoga - reasoning the mind from gross most to subtle most state culminating in samadhi. This type of Jnana or knowledge is not exactly like book learning. Rather Jnana is discovering one's self and uncovering its mysteries through direct inner contemplation. Ultimately knowledge of relative phenomena dissolves and only the original Life-Force or God remains.
This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at December 4, 2016 9:26 PM MST
self awareness, enough knowledge to understand things and maturity to make the right choices for oneself. Those things allow to be an individual instead of just another animal of the herd.
My existence began same as a snowflake; no two are exactly the same. I If reincarnation is true life will begin again with a different design which means I could become an intestinal bacteria, a fish , tree, bird.. whatever.
This post was edited by Kittigate at December 5, 2016 4:24 AM MST
O-uknow 