Okay, I'm going to try to articulate the experience? Again, words are insufficient, but here are more of them.[1]
So here goes:
In the day-to-day life you experience a boundary between that which we consider 'self' and that which we consider 'other'. That boundary gives the environment shape, defined by what you know to be you. To say the same thing another way, the boundary is the difference between seeing the color blue, and describing it. Or the difference between listening to music, and describing vibrations in the air. Alan Watts has some lectures which might help you understand what this boundary is, if you don't "get it" yet.
That boundary is illusory. It is a way of thinking, a way of separating out the ego's experience from the environment. It is a pattern of thought and thought patterns can be changed. Psychedelics (I'm told), meditation (I know), and other techniques (sensory deprivation? sleep deprivation? haven't tried) are ways of changing your thinking to remove or blur this boundary. Some ways are more permanent than others; having such an experience often leaves you questioning what permanent is in the first place.
And again, as many in this thread have said, I've described it, or tried to, but it is necessary to experience it to actually understand the full detail of the situation.
[1] Commentary: I would argue that any form of expressing experience to another person is by construction imprecise; to truly have the same experience you must be the same person, and then you wouldn't need words. http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer
In the day-to-day life you experience a boundary between that which we consider 'self' and that which we consider 'other'. That boundary gives the environment shape, defined by what you know to be you.
To say the same thing another way, the boundary is the difference between seeing the color blue, and describing it.
I think I understand (to some degree) what you mean by each of these statements. The first seems to relate to the Buddhist concept of non-self (at least to the degree that you perceive the boundary of self to be relative rather than a well-defined absolute) while the second I think relates to the nama-rupa distinction or in other systems to the notion of qualia as opposed to abstract descriptive knowledge.
However it isn't clear to me that these are the same thing. Could you clarify how you understand the relation between these two notions ?
So here goes:
In the day-to-day life you experience a boundary between that which we consider 'self' and that which we consider 'other'. That boundary gives the environment shape, defined by what you know to be you. To say the same thing another way, the boundary is the difference between seeing the color blue, and describing it. Or the difference between listening to music, and describing vibrations in the air. Alan Watts has some lectures which might help you understand what this boundary is, if you don't "get it" yet.
That boundary is illusory. It is a way of thinking, a way of separating out the ego's experience from the environment. It is a pattern of thought and thought patterns can be changed. Psychedelics (I'm told), meditation (I know), and other techniques (sensory deprivation? sleep deprivation? haven't tried) are ways of changing your thinking to remove or blur this boundary. Some ways are more permanent than others; having such an experience often leaves you questioning what permanent is in the first place.
And again, as many in this thread have said, I've described it, or tried to, but it is necessary to experience it to actually understand the full detail of the situation.
[1] Commentary: I would argue that any form of expressing experience to another person is by construction imprecise; to truly have the same experience you must be the same person, and then you wouldn't need words. http://eidolon.net/?story=Closer