Zosimos wrote:
>
> Despite your claim of 'advanced' knowledge you seem to cling
> to some simplistic assumptions.
>
> The 'I' is not the 'soul' but merely the ego

I agree. So what pronoun do I use when speaking of my soul as opposed to say, yours? OK...I'll say it this way if you're going split hairs: the soul does not divide into 2 physical bodies anymore than the ego or higher mind divides itself.

The sensory consciousness is secondary, a
> product of the body, not the real being. Even 'scientific'
> psychology admits that the conscious self is just a stream of
> impressions and not a real entity. Yet it tries to behave as
> if it is, and thus all the 'psychological problems' that
> humans are prone to. So this much is recognize by both modern
> 'scientific' psychology and traditional religuous/esoteric
> psychology.

The senses are still part of us, and in fact they dominate the mind--pull it downward, preventing it from untangling the knot between itself and the soul, located at the eye-center. The right kind of meditation can reverse this pull with the help of a true teacher:

[www.ishkiia.net]

> According to Vedic/Buddhist tradition and the Chinese Taoist
> tradition, even the deeper 'self' ('soul' or whatever you
> call it) is only an illusion and must ultimately be
> dissolved. If this 'self' is not a definite thing but a
> 'phenomenon' like personality does it have to be contained in
> any one location? Who is to say what forms it may take or how
> it might relate to the physical world? (Or more
> appropriately, does it need to relate to the physical world
> at all? Why does it need to be in a 'location' in extended
> space-time?)

Separation itself is an illusion--BUT...it's not an illusion to the one trapped in it. Only to one who is liberated. Also...illusion is relative. I will tell you from experience that the ether is more real than the physical, and the astral is more real than the ether, and the mental plane--"nirvana"--is more real than the top of the astral--yet all are illusory.

> Think:
>
> If there is 'no such thing as time' then how can the same
> 'soul' have more than one incarnation at all? Aren't ALL
> incarnations 'simultaneous' in ultimate timeless reality? So
> the 'soul' already has many different 'streams of
> consciousness' feeding into it. From a timeless perspective,
> what difference does it make whether some of those 'streams
> of consciousness' are closely related in the physical world
> of space-time? The experience of events in 'time' is a
> feature of the 'I' not the soul, there is no danger of
> 'confusion' from too much happening at once. :)

Everything is simultaneous I'm taught, but I have yet to experience that. I have experienced a degree of timelessness. This kind of high teaching cannot be reduced to words. It is beyond the mind's capacity and can only be understood when we have left the mind behind at it's origin--the top of Universal Mind, or "nirvana", or "trikuti"--and gone beyond it.

> I haven't found anything about this in Buddhist philosophy
> yet, but both the Cayce material and the Seth material
> maintain that simultaneous incarnations do occur.

Buddhist philosophy was written by the kind of people who put the bible together--put this in, leave that out, maybe he meant this, maybe that...
the guy lived 2500 years ago and whatever his followers are practicing today has little to do with his teachings on the inner path of the initiate.

Cayce and Seth are both entities channeling from the astral. Don't bet the mortagage on everything they say, especially Seth. There's enough truth in their stuff to make people want to bite the whole banana.
David