How could we perhaps define self? Pure consciousness expressed through the bag of skin it occupies throughout time and space. How do you define other? Everything which constitutes that bag of skin… the space in-between the spokes…
[for] we join spokes together in a wheel, but it is the center hole that makes the wagon move (Tao Te Ching).
Is it not true that every inch of our epidermis contains pores? By another name open absorption conduits that take in their immediate surroundings, that are constituted by that which it absorbs. We are the vessel, the glass. But we are also the water which takes the form of that glass. It goes by many names, it performs many functions, but it always takes the shape of that which it occupies.
And that’s consciousness. Brahman, expressed through the Atman, and colored by the cheeky fellow along the way, that one which stands in as a figurative coalescence of all those things which made up its reasons to go on. The ego. “I”... I must survive. And that’s all well and good, because everyone else is doing that too; fur, flippers, gills, and even Groucho Marx. And you know what Groucho Marx has in common with everyone else? Their either dead like him, or headed for the grave.