Just being: un-individualized. An interpretation of Parmenides DKB16 and a glance at empirical research

In this paper I build on my interpretation of Parmenides: being or awareness —which is continuous, undifferentiated, and unchanging— is what is really there and, thus, what we, humans, really are. It is only conventionally (according to the human doxai, B19) that there are many things that are born and die, and that we are separate individuals. I present here the following interpretation of DKB16: what keeps all limbs of one individual together is awareness; awareness —the unifying factor, which is what perceives and knows in all of us— is the same for all individuals: there is no way to differentiate one unifying factor from the next: at the fundamental level there is no differentiation, no separation and no individuals. I suggest that the unifying awareness of B16 resembles what contemporary cognitive scientists and phenomenologists refer to as the unitary, continuous, and ubiquitous structure, which accompanies and unifies all our experiences. They refer to it as pre-reflective self-awareness, ‘sense of I’, and ‘minimal self’, and distinguish it from reflective awareness, or sense of ‘Me’, that enables one to construct one’s narrative identity. I also refer to empirical research that has been interpreted as pointing to the experience of the dissociation between pre-reflective self-awareness and sense of ‘Me’. The subjects who experienced this un-individualized self-awareness, report it to be an experience of integration, loss of time and space, and profound relaxation (in other words, unshakenness) —which closely resemble Parmenides’ signs of being (B8).