This is unsatisfying as an answer because it leads to more questions. Without directly connecting an experience to a danger or receiving instruction from someone else about it, I don't see why one would startle at all. For example, as a child I didn't know the coils on the stove were hot. They were enticingly red. My mother said, don't touch. It's hot. You will get a burn. But I touched. And only then did I fully understand what she meant. I learned what the language labels meant and I learned the experience (which I never wanted to repeat).yes agreed, and it has been shown that babies eyes dilate very large when shown a picture of a snake, but not at a picture of a knife for example. Evolution likely dictates.. avoiding a snake is related to survival, a knife maybe or maybe not.
But now it is involuntary for me to avoid touching the hot stovetop. This experience was programmed by memory into my body's reaction. I don't have to think not to touch the hot stove. My body just ensures that I don't without thinking about it. But how was this program built? And if there are innate startle reactions that confer some evolutionary advantage, then how could the memory have been passed to program it in? What is the origin of the program that causes a reaction to something that has never been experienced?
Just another puzzle to ponder.
I don't feel anything that can been seen, heard, smelled, tasted or touched.If you reflect back on the question that we started with.. What comes up when reading that there is no "separate self," never has been & never will be? It is all a made up story.
How does it feel in the body to sit with that sentence, answer from Direct Experience.
All reading that sentence does is bring up thoughts. In the land of thoughts I'm intrigued. But I don't feel anything concrete or tactile in reading that sentence. I do not feel any presence of an inner self using only these 5 senses.
