I recently read René Descartes' Principles of Philosophy, and his idea of “I think, therefore I am” really got me thinking. I was just scrolling through some philosophy stuff when I came across Martin Heidegger's name. One thing led to another, and somehow I ended up reading about existentialism.

Now I'm a little confused. From what I understand, Heidegger had a very different approach to existence than Descartes did. Descartes starts with the thinking self as the foundation of certainty, while Heidegger seems to question the way we even understand existence in the first place.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around it, so I might be getting some things wrong here.

For those of you who are into philosophy, how do you see this difference? Do you think Heidegger was actually rejecting Descartes' idea, or was he approaching the same question from a completely different angle?

I'd love to hear how you guys understand it.

The Theory of the Soul

The soul is one, and it exists throughout the entire universe. It isn't limited to humans or other living beings; even inanimate and nonexistent things have a soul.

The vessel gives individuality to the soul. Since everything is part of the same soul, the part of the soul that exists within my vessel is the part I have the most control over. This makes me, as a vessel, responsible for what happens to that part of the soul.

The soul has existed for eternity, without a beginning, but it does have an absolute end. Its ultimate goal is to break free from the endless cycle of existence and reincarnation. However, a soul cannot free itself while it remains a soul. It needs a vessel to achieve liberation.

The Cycle of Reincarnation

When a vessel dies, the soul gets attracted back into the cycle of reincarnation. This happens because the vessel dies with unfulfilled desires, and since the soul was connected to that vessel, those desires influence its journey.

The soul doesn't actually carry these desires with it, but they prevent it from completing its ultimate objective.

When the soul reincarnates, there's an extremely small chance that it will become human again because there are almost infinite possibilities for what it could become. It could return as another living being or even an inanimate object.

This cycle continues endlessly until the soul manages to break free.

The First Path: Ending Desires

Having a human vessel is the best opportunity for a soul to achieve liberation because humans can become aware of their true nature.

However, becoming aware that you're part of one universal soul isn't enough. You must also overcome your desires.

Even if you abandon material desires, the desire to love and be loved might remain. And even if you overcome those desires, there's still one of the hardest desires to overcome: the desire to remain an individual.

For example, I love being Yash. I want to remain myself, experience life as myself, and continue existing as an individual. Even if I overcome every other desire, this one might still hold me back.

That's why monks meditate and detach themselves from the world. They're trying to let go of their individuality and free themselves from the attachments that keep them trapped in the cycle.

Deep meditation can also allow someone to temporarily detach their soul from their vessel. By forgetting their individuality and becoming one with the universe, they can supposedly surpass the limitations of their physical body.

This could allow them to access knowledge beyond their physical limitations, manifest things into reality, or travel freely throughout the universe through astral projection.

However, this separation is temporary because the vessel is still alive. True liberation can only happen when the vessel dies without leaving any desires behind.

What If Every Soul Achieved Liberation?

What if every soul managed to break free from the cycle?

It's almost impossible because not everyone becomes aware of the soul's true nature, and the process of liberation is extremely difficult.

For every million expansions of the soul, perhaps only one vessel manages to achieve liberation through this path.

But hypothetically, what if every vessel succeeded?

If every soul became free and all desires disappeared, perhaps the universe itself would cease to exist.

The Second Path: Selling Your Soul to the Devil

There's another way to achieve liberation, but it works in the complete opposite way.

Instead of abandoning desires, you fulfil them.

When someone sells their soul to the devil, the devil grants them their desires, giving them fame, money, power, and everything else they want.

The first path involves ending desires, while this path involves fulfilling them until there's nothing left to desire.

Both paths lead to the same goal: breaking free from the cycle of reincarnation.

However, there's one major difference.

When someone achieves liberation through the first path, their soul becomes free.

When someone sells their soul to the devil, their soul also escapes the cycle, but the devil takes possession of it.

What happens to those souls afterward is still unknown.

The Devil's True Purpose

Perhaps the devil uses these liberated souls to transform the universe into something worse.

As mentioned earlier, only one vessel out of every million soul expansions might achieve liberation through the first path.

However, the devil's path could allow far more souls to escape the cycle.

This means the devil could potentially collect an enormous number of souls, far more than those who achieve liberation naturally.

And if every liberated soul has the potential to affect the universe, then the devil might be gathering these souls for something much bigger.

Perhaps the path that promises to fulfil every desire is actually the beginning of something far worse.

(polished my language a little using chatgpt sorry)

While the majority of people are flying around like headless chickens, I’m here afflicted by my own consciousness by how ridiculous everything is.

This world is an awful place, and it’s humans in particular that make it such. This generation is absolutely degenerate. It feels like im living in a dystopia, its such an absurd experience you can’t help but feel existential dread.

The things society values and advocates for. The toxicity of social media. How bitter and cold people are nowadays. The trivial things people concern themselves with. It’s so surreal, and honestly feels comedic.

There’s a huge dissonance when i walk out that door and into the public, i feel a weight of loneliness when surrounded by people. And i feel like people are so immersed in their daily lives, just subconsciously living on autopilot, that they don’t take the time to look around and realize the absurdity of it all. Or at least they don’t have the capacity to.

I am curious about this philosophy as I believe that since humans are purely free to practice and pursue what they want to, and even influence their destiny or purpose as they are born without one. (I believe that if God exists, then God could be rational and chose not to interfere with the creations God made) And I would like to know more about this philosophy, the only thing I know about this philosophy is that we choose our own purpose. I'm curious and I wanna know more about Existentialism. So, what further more does Existentialism teach?

I don’t feel satisfied with myself. I did get in good shape and worked on myself by setting goals for myself, and telling me I will be fulfilled after that, but still I feel an emptiness that is filled with past regrets, and I always keep telling myself what if I had this or that. Do you believe it is possible to reach full satisfaction over your existence, or our human condition just forces us to strive for more, or the goal is to accept the way things are and move forward, a bit like Sartre would say, responsibility of our life.

The concept of bad faith by Sartre emphasis on the idea that we as humans often use real external circumstances as an excuse in order to avoid any kind of responsibility. This idea is very illuminating to me since I have noticed this pattern inside of me. I guess the best way to avoid having "bad faith" is being absolutely honest which I heard from Prashant who's one of modern philosophers. Do you think it'll work? Or is there an another way? Sometimes we're being dishonest subtly and we avoid checking our intentions. Only honesty can break that pattern. Maybe have a litmus test, a question which checks into that pattern?

I am curious about this philosophy as I believe that since humans are purely free to practice and pursue what they want to, and even influence their destiny or purpose as they are born without one. (I believe that if God exists, then God could be rational and chose not to interfere with the creations God made) And I would like to know more about this philosophy, the only thing I know about this philosophy is that we choose our own purpose. I'm curious and I wanna know more about Existentialism. So, what further more does Existentialism teach?

Living within the absurd has, at times, seemed meaningless to me. And these were not fleeting moments; sometimes, that feeling lasted for months. Once, during my short life, it even lasted for years

This absence of meaning grew increasingly stronger. However, my consciousness evolved in such a way that my vibration would no longer remain sustained solely by suffering, which was nullifying the possibility of living

Obviously, I read extensively so that my consciousness could withstand the complex concept of existence. Here, I want to share that, among everything I read, I obviously read Camus. Everything I am writing sounds a great deal like The Myth of Sisyphus. But what I was ultimately able to do was not merely understand through reason and intellect, but truly feel and experience through my emotions, when my will genuinely attempted to show me that life possesses a hidden meaning

For a long time, I felt that my own existence resembled that endless movement: searching, questioning, trying to understand, and returning to the same point. However, something began to change when I stopped approaching the problem solely through reason and intellect. Although philosophy had provided me with concepts through which to think about my existence, I needed to experience what I was trying to understand in a different way. I needed the question of meaning to cease being exclusively a mental operation and become a lived experience

As a musician, I have always had a relationship with sound that goes beyond its structure: sound is also a way of being in the world, of perceiving it, and of relating to that which I cannot always express through language

When I tried harder to feel connected to life, I thought that connection would come in the form of a romantic partner, but it came in the form of any living being itself. In my particular case, it was through plants

It was then that my relationship with music and plants acquired a particular meaning

By translating certain electrical variations in plants into sound, I found the possibility of establishing a sensory relationship with another living organism. Through sonification devices, signals that normally remain outside my auditory perception are transformed into a sonic experience that I can hear, interpret, and experience musically

This is not about claiming that plants necessarily possess a musical intention or produce sounds with existential meaning directed toward me. What matters is that this translation opens up a form of encounter between two organisms whose ways of perceiving and inhabiting the world are different. The plant does not need to answer my questions about existence for its presence to transform the way I experience it

In this encounter, something fundamental changes: I am no longer merely an individual attempting to solve the enigma of my own life, but also a living being who listens, participates, and establishes a relationship with another form of life. Music ceases to be merely a human creation and becomes, in this context, a space of mediation between my experience and the biological processes of another organism

Sisyphus does not discover a transcendent explanation that justifies his condemnation; his freedom lies in recognizing his condition and continuing to live without resorting to a definitive answer. In a similar way, the sonification of plants does not offer me an ultimate truth about the meaning of existence. What it offers me is something different: a concrete experience that allows me to stop demanding an answer from life before granting myself the possibility of living it

Perhaps meaning was not hidden in the form of an answer I had to decipher, but rather in the possibility of participating in existence without fully understanding it. Listening to a plant, translating its variations into sound, and experiencing what emerges from this process allowed me to shift the question. Instead of constantly asking myself why life exists or what its ultimate purpose is, I began to ask myself what it means to be alive, here and now, in relation to other living beings

I do not claim to have resolved the absurd or that suffering has disappeared. Rather, I discovered that uncertainty did not have to nullify my ability to experience the world. Existence could remain inexplicable and still contain experiences capable of moving me, connecting me to others, and making me choose to remain within it

If what I’ve written has resonated with you in any way, and if you’d like to hear about and see the process behind the electrical circuitry, synthesizers, and frequencies I used to create this experience, I’ve posted the details on my profile to avoid spamming! Love to all!

Existentialism is the one type of philosophy that has changed my life.

I studied philosophy in college, but no curriculum had existentialism for some reason --I also went to an Ivy league school.

Oddly enough, the best philosophy for my personal growth came from reading philosophy on my own, finding books that people like on reddit or goodreads, and digging into them. I was browsing the philosophy section of a book store --or maybe it was the library-- like I usualy do when I came across a book on existentialism.

The book claimed that unlike other schools of thought, existentialism isn't really a formalized category. Instead, several philosophers --notably kierkegaard, sarte, neitzche among others-- independently came to similar enough conclusions that then later became tied into "existentialism".

When I read that book, I was floored. It gave expression to something I felt in my bones since I was a kid but never could quite articulate. It showed me why I love the philosophers we now refer to as existentialists.

I was always so annoyed by people growing up who said that I was meant to be this or that. It seemed like people who didn't know shit about me were tellling me what I would amount to in a matter of minutes spent with me --many were well-meaning people too, like teachers, coaches and family.

But it seemed to me that over time, people lacking in courage or motivation will allow these voices of society to shoehorn us into certain jobs and identities that we never want to embody. I hated, absolutely abhorred, when I saw this being done to others because I hated when people did it to me, espeically when they envisioned that I would amount to become a person that I knew I didn't want to be.

I loved motivational movies, typically sports movies, that my football coach would show us at film night, esentially the underdog stories, where the protagonist must insist on a becoming more than what the world expect of them.

I always dreamed that I could say the same for myself. As I've gotten older, I've kept that mantra alive for myself, despite what seemed to be the universe consipiring to make me a loser. And now, when I see that all the people who doubted me are flipping the switch and saying they knew I'd be successful all along, I know that existentialism, the crux of it, is what allowed me to flip my narrative, to change the direction of my life.

I hate bullying because it is essentially telling a person they are nothing, they will amount to nothing, and many people start to beleive that over time and end up becoming exactly that. Existntialism reminds us that, no, we all that choice every day to beocme who we want to become. With it comes the responsiblity to choose wisely, to accept the sacrafices, and to be honest about what identities we value and who we are.

Please comment if any of this resonates with you, and if you want to know more about existentialism, please feel free to DM me!

There is no meaning to life.

I was wandering through life, trying to live the lives that every human being who ever existed on Earth once lived—in different races, countries, cultures, and centuries. I succeeded. I experienced life from countless human perspectives. I have felt their joy, nostalgia, grief, suffering, and hopelessness.

Every single one of them was trying to give life a different meaning. Some copied the meaning of others. Some created their own. Some rejected the very idea of existence. Yet every one of them became enslaved by the meaning they chose. And some were not even given a choice; they were forced to accept a meaning imposed upon them.

But how can one give meaning to life solely through life itself?

Perhaps one must still give life their own meaning, despite being spiteful, miserable, sluggish, or ecstatic. In the end, what we choose as our meaning may be subtle and insignificant to some, yet heaven itself to others.

A pigeon built a nest on my kitchen window and laid two eggs. They carry disease and their droppings are a health problem, so the practical answer is to remove them. But no rule or authority is telling me what to do here. It's just me, the eggs, and a decision that nobody can make on my behalf. This is the kind of small, ordinary choice where Sartre's "condemned to be free" stops feeling abstract.

What I keep wrestling with:

- Does worth come from essence or from existence? If life has no inherent value-ranking, on what grounds do I decide my comfort outweighs two unborn pigeons? And if I rank lives by "contribution to the world," I have to admit humans are not winning that contest.

- Bad faith. I could hide behind "survival of the fittest" or "it's just nature's cycle." But isn't that Sartrean bad faith, disguising a choice as a necessity? Nature doesn't make this call. I do.

- Outsourcing the act. I thought about paying someone else so I wouldn't carry the guilt. If I choose the outcome, is the responsibility still mine? Is wanting clean hands just an attempt to escape the weight of my own freedom?

- The absurd. I'm agonizing over two eggs, while the universe doesn't care what I decide. Do I accept that meaninglessness and still choose carefully, as Camus might say? Or does the absurdity make the agonizing pointless?

- Ambiguity and the other. We could coexist if I just cleaned the window more often. De Beauvoir wrote about acting within ambiguity, where every choice costs something. Am I obligated to the nest in any real sense, or only to whatever values I decide to create?

​

This quote and my understanding " i always feel incomplete and try to grab everything so I can feel complete , for this I change my identity every time "

But I wanna know the highest meaning of this quote , whoever has read the camus deeply can answer it because i have only read "the stranger" .

And I've heard a lot about sisyphus.

The comment section is all open , come and engage .

I'm 36, turning 37 in November. Single never been married.
I came to canada in 2010. Lived here for 16years now. Was 20 when i landed here.
After spending few days in Canada after landing, I realized that this is not the place where i should spend rest of my life.
I faced some racism and heartless people who were trying to give me bad time, that left very deep scar on me.
The problem was not about money or jobs, i knew i would get it if I try harder. And I did do multiple jobs. The problem was acceptance. I felt like canadians mostly never accepted me. Now people from my country were like my family here. I'm not saying canadians are bad. Canadians are mostly very nice and chill. But there was clash in culture and practices e.t.c. Like I never had a Canadian friend for some reason.
But it becomes very daunting when your family is not there with you, when your friends are not actually real friends. So you are basically in survival mode and getting pass by on everything.
Finally after so many years recently I met some amazing canadians who accepted me as is. And I am so happy to have them, but I have to change my house because I have to take care of my mom. So I have to leave them. We will be in touch. But phone is different than being physically present.

Dating life:
I have been single for most part of my life. My first girlfriend was back in 2013, when I was 23 years old. And my relationship lasted for a year.
I never had a girlfriend after that. It was obviously some of my issues too. And I'm trying my best to acknowledge those issues and work on them.
But as I'm 6.1 ft tall, athletic body type, gym goer, then why its so hard for me to get on a date with women.
When I dress up go out women do give me stares and they do check me out. But as soon as i go up and talk to them, they act like nothing happened, and like they weren't staring at me.
I see for some guys women come up to them and talk to them, i see women are taking initiatives and talking to them. But why not me?
All of my friends say Im handsome tall, good looking. But then why its so hard for me. In dating apps I do get likes and matches, but still I have to keep spending weeks with girls over the text, where the conversations is going fine and we both are having fun, but as soon as i ask their number, they start ghosting. And it takes weeks.
I'm working on talking to women and getting better, but the question comes. I'm fairly decent looking, and why its so fucking hard to bring them on a fucking date. As they clearly like me, they clearly talking to me for days and days and days but they still are not comfortable to meet me.

With all of this I feel emptiness from inside. And I agree the girl needs a man who is happy by itself and not find happiness in a women or externally.

But I never truly get to understand this concept of finding Happiness internally.
Its always I have to distract my mind into something. Either videos games, either salsa classes either gym. But its always something external.
Although I push myself to achieve what i want to achieve. But internal happiness and healthy mental strength comes huge into play to achieving goals. When goals get hard, when they are obstacles. That's when internal happiness comes into play. That's the only fuel which you need to achieve a goal and get it done.
I tried salsa classes and i did it for women. I am a dancer and was doing at beginner level. But I wanted to become good at it so that women will be coming to me for dance just like other good dancers. That never really happened. And I have to the hard way, practice practice practice, spending time time time. So I was like Im a dancer why I have to tried so hard to be good at it. So i stopped going. As I was looking for some fun, but the fun told me "you have to practice and go through hardship"

I went to gym, but then I don't like they put on AC in gym and huge fans. I like heat and sweat where I could feel warm and pump my blood to feel alive. Plus gyms are so crowded in my area and I just hate where I have to wait for so long to get my workout done. And the crowd is filled with sweaty smelly dudes and their sweat is dripping all over the equipment.
I tried less crowded gym. But that one was far away from my place and I have to park far away from gym because parking wasn't free near plus the gym was so expensive. So I was just not going to gym because of distance. And I end up canceling all gym memberships.

I like the concept of outdoor gyms that are usually in US states. Because canada is a cold country with no sun most of the time so there is no outdoor gym. And again I feel bad that I don't have gym membership. So all I am doing is going for a walk and just do burpees and pushups on wet grass with cloudy and gloomy weather.

So all of this I feel why I can't be happy just by being myself. I always have to depend on something to have happier days. If a girl is dancing with me, if I am going on a date, if someone gives me a gift, if someone treat me nicely, if i make more money, etc. I don't know how this concept exist that feel happy by yourself. Its very hard to be that way when cloudy cold, rainy weather are all you're surrounded with.

Humble request: Please read the complete post, or do not read it at all.

I recently came across a quote whose exact wording I do not remember: 'The beauty of literature is that it tells you that all your thoughts and questions about the absurdity of life, family, love, friendship, and existentialism have existed forever. Some other people from some other century, from some other part of the world, have also had these feelings, thoughts, and questions, and you get to know about them through literature."

For some reason, I have lately found myself in a state of extreme boredom, though I sometimes wonder whether it is actually boredom or something else. There is an Indian saying that translates to "An idle mind is the devil’s workshop." On the other hand, I have also heard the advice to "embrace boredom."

I quit social media around a year ago, and I do not even feel the urge to use it anymore. Over the past few months, I have also taken up reading and have read around 15 to 17 books, exploring whichever genres interest me. I have come across some great books, too, such as "Man's Search for Meaning".

However, every opinion, whether praising or critical, is subjective and inherently biased. Is there anything you would recommend reading during this phase? I am not trying to escape this phase or find a solution to it. It is a part of my life, and eventually, it will become a part of me. Yet, I find myself extremely confused, and I am even struggling to find the words to express what I am experiencing.

There are posts here far longer than this one, but I will keep mine at this. Thank you to everyone who took a moment to pause and give some attention to my thoughts.

An Open Note to “the American reception of Nietzsche”.

I'm at the age where I'm thinking about if I want kids or not, and honestly I sometimes just don't see the point in having them if they have to unwillingly experience death. Death is scary, so why bring something onto this earth just to die unexpectedly one day? I've been upset at the fact I have to die one day, and I just don't want to experience that nor did I sign up for it. I understand life is what you make it, and it is about the experience. But thinking about how your world will abruptly end one day is very unsettling and I don't think it's worth bringing more life here on earth. Death outweighs the pros of life in my opinion.

After rereading Heiner Mullers The Mission (assuming this is the correct translation), it has one of the most powerful descriptions of hope I’ve ever read. What I find interesting is that hope here isn’t optimism or the belief that everything will be fine.

I am the Angel of Despair.
With my hands I dispense ecstasy, numbness, oblivion, the lust and torment of bodies.
My language is silence, my song the scream.
Terror dwells in the shadow of my wings.
My hope is the last gasp. My hope is the first battle.
I am the knife with which the dead man cracks open his coffin.
I am the one who will be.
My flight is the rebellion, my sky the abyss of tomorrow.

I've had an existentialist thinking long before i knew the word existentialism existed. And sometimes i have these random episodes where i want to stop doing anything and just surrender. And when i dive deep into it everything seems so painful. I wish i was a normal person who didn't give a fuck about it. But idk man everything is so fucking useless and we're all dying every second. I don't know what's scarier life after death or the total death. May god save us all. He's the only final hope we can hold onto. Because otherwise there is nothing we can do but suffer from this deep dilemma.