Is the human self nonexistent?

Well, I don't think reasoning in and of itself will arrive at any useful outcome. Everything is dependent upon the initial assumptions. Above, you posit certain things as your starting point. In particular an assertion that whatever is passed from life to life in reincarnation is almost meaningless to us. I have to disagree with that starting point.

My position is that I'm very much the same person as I was in a previous life, having the same values, perspective, interests and things I would consider worth supporting. In addition, my feelings, emotions, pains and joys are the same. As well as that, even my sense organs seem to be the same, not in the physical construction which is trivial but in how the senses are felt, understood, experienced.

The only ways in which I differ from previous lives is things like place of residence, language spoken, education and employment. These things are inevitable, the external world is ever-changing, in a new life one lives in the present. These things are not what defines me. I know from having spent time living for a while in different countries and places in this lifetime that no matter where I am, I'm always me. The external world doesn't define me.

I am entirely comfortable and confident that the real me, who I am right now, does indeed persist from life to life. In fact the very words of that previous sentence are a nonsense since I wrote the word 'life' more than once. But there is only one life, the continuous me.

I'm not attempting to use reason to support my view. It is simply how and what I have experienced.

OK. I try to keep an open mind. You have pointed out a proposed change to my starting assumptions that would considerably change the conclusions. Your own actual personal experiences of somehow psychically contacting memories of your past lives (or of obtaining convincing psychically channeled information) are extraordinary in my observation. I certainly have never had anything like this. I have attempted past life regression hypnosis a number of times, with little result in terms of actual vivid recall of experiences in past lives - just mostly a sense of strain as apparently deep levels of my mind sought to confabulate stories in accordance with expectations and suggestions. I also have had a number of psychically channeled "past life" sessions, but have never been too impressed with them as being plausible personally, since they generally have been too conveniently in accordance with desires and requests for information about past lives relevant to the particular problem or challenge occupying my mind at the time.

My ongoing hypothesis has been that the multiple reincarnated lives are as very different personalities. If they are really very similar except for the physical circumstances of life, then there would be a very real sense in which the soul would be sort of a greatly amplified "me".  The Lego block/Ford Model T analogy would no longer be valid, since the much more complex final structure incorporating the starting yellow Lego block with red X's would still presumably be in the general form of a closely related polygonal solid (retaining the same basic identity as each of the composite individual elements, which would all be small variations of the small yellow cube with red X's marked on the faces).

There would still be the question of whether the temporarily separate human "me" (during physical life and during the initial stages of an afterlife) exists simultaneously with the composite soul "me". There is at least some reason to believe that that is the case.

[Ninshub]

Nope. I was once open to a view like that, but you can blame @Titus Rivas (!) for having convinced me otherwise: that, analytically, if one self undergoes one set of phenomenal experiences, and one self undergoes a different set of phenomenal experiences, then, by definition they are different selves. That's why I would only accept them as the same self if they (it, in this case) multiplexed the two different streams of phenomenal experience into a singular (though multiplexed) stream of phenomenal experience: in other words, if both of their phenomenal experiences were identical though comprised of two "channels" of which the same self was simultaneously aware in both its physical incarnation and its higher dimensional incarnation.

Thanks for clarifying, Laird.

I don't have a mind made up about this but I'm inclined to disagree, or think that view is too restrictive.

I sometimes wonder if maybe something about a purely "analytical" approach, something in the human understanding, is too constrained to appreciate the complexity of Reality. Which of course brings up the topic of whether logic is fundamental or not. (And which type of logic at that.)

---

I also wonder if this means you would necessarily therefore find that Danielle McKinnon's communication experience is flawed somehow. Either that's she imagining something, or is not getting the proper understanding of what is happening.

[Laird]

I also wonder if this means you would necessarily therefore find that Danielle McKinnon's communication experience is flawed somehow. Either that's she imagining something, or is not getting the proper understanding of what is happening.

I've just rewatched her vid, which I think you or somebody else has shared previously - or I just happened to stumble upon accidentally.

Given my understanding expressed above, her claims don't make sense to me, but that's not to say there's no truth to them. Maybe there's a way to harmonise them with my understanding.

Let me ask this of you, though:

Assuming that Danielle is correct, do you expect that when you "cross over", a rush of memories from the "you" who greeted your companion animals on "the other side" while you were "over here" will flood back into you, and you'll suddenly "remember" that you were in both places at once? If not, how do you imagine it working? If you as in the experiencer on "this side" never, ever gains any inkling, much less explicit memory, of greeting your companion animals on "the other side", even when you return there, then how can that experience be in any meaningful way said to be yours?

[Laird]

Let me ask this of you, though:

Assuming that Danielle is correct, do you expect that when you "cross over", a rush of memories from the "you" who greeted your companion animals on "the other side" while you were "over here" will flood back into you, and you'll suddenly "remember" that you were in both places at once? If not, how do you imagine it working? If you as in the experiencer on "this side" never, ever gains any inkling, much less explicit memory, of greeting your companion animals on "the other side", even when you return there, then how can that experience be in any meaningful way said to be yours?

Here's another puzzler for you:

What if the "you" who greeted your companion animals on "the other side" also greets you - the Ninshub with whom I'm directly communicating "over here" - when you return there?

Who will be who?!

[Ninshub]

Assuming that Danielle is correct, do you expect that when you "cross over", a rush of memories from the "you" who greeted your companion animals on "the other side" while you were "over here" will flood back into you, and you'll suddenly "remember" that you were in both places at once? If not, how do you imagine it working?

I hadn't gone through the exercise of thinking it through, but yes at this moment I'm imagining it could be something like that.

[Ninshub]

Here's another puzzler for you:

What if the "you" who greeted your companion animals on "the other side" also greets you - the Ninshub with whom I'm directly communicating "over here" - when you return there?

Who will be who?!

No, there won't be any greeting - it'll be the same me. There will be a unitary experience, as I Ninshub (my memories, etc.) are integrated back into the bigger me. I'll have the perspective of the bigger me, and I'll experience it all as a non-discontinuous experience.

[Laird]

No, there won't be any greeting

OK, but you can't rule out the hypothetical possibility of such a thing given the premise you're entertaining, can you? You've already allowed that "you" can be in two places at once [ETA: with each "you" having completely separate streams of phenomenal experience], so, couldn't those two places be close enough for "the two yous" to see one another and communicate?

There are precedents for this in fiction, especially science fiction, and especially when it comes to time travel. I just don't think it makes it from fiction to fact. That's me though. You do you!

Here's another puzzler for you:

What if the "you" who greeted your companion animals on "the other side" also greets you - the Ninshub with whom I'm directly communicating "over here" - when you return there?

Who will be who?!

I touched on this the other day when I said that I believe the ego self mostly dies off, and is simply a bubble creation formed around the core self and awareness in this time and space. 
Ego is not the real core self. It is like a set of dirty clothes that cloud and confuse things. The ego would have you believe it is what survives, and that everything it wants or remembers survives, so it is all important and everything all about self, me, mine, what I want, who I am.
So, even if memories are always recorded, so much trash belongs to this physical ego rendition, and much of that will get tossed out of the focus because it doesn't belong with your core except as a learning experience, it isn't you, or the real core you, unless you remove your ego and let that core live here and now.
Are the animals companions to your ego, or your core being? 
Are you filtering your communications using your current ego?
Are you projecting what you want things to be, instead of what they really are?

OK. I try to keep an open mind. You have pointed out a proposed change to my starting assumptions that would considerably change the conclusions. Your own actual personal experiences of somehow psychically contacting memories of your past lives (or of obtaining convincing psychically channeled information) are extraordinary in my observation. I certainly have never had anything like this. I have attempted past life regression hypnosis a number of times, with little result in terms of actual vivid recall of experiences in past lives - just mostly a sense of strain as apparently deep levels of my mind sought to confabulate stories in accordance with expectations and suggestions. I also have had a number of psychically channeled "past life" sessions, but have never been too impressed with them as being plausible personally, since they generally have been too conveniently in accordance with desires and requests for information about past lives relevant to the particular problem or challenge occupying my mind at the time.

My ongoing hypothesis has been that the multiple reincarnated lives are as very different personalities. If they are really very similar except for the physical circumstances of life, then there would be a very real sense in which the soul would be sort of a greatly amplified "me".  The Lego block/Ford Model T analogy would no longer be valid, since the much more complex final structure incorporating the starting yellow Lego block with red X's would still presumably be in the general form of a closely related polygonal solid (retaining the same basic identity as each of the composite individual elements, which would all be small variations of the small yellow cube with red X's marked on the faces).

There would still be the question of whether the temporarily separate human "me" (during physical life and during the initial stages of an afterlife) exists simultaneously with the composite soul "me". There is at least some reason to believe that that is the case.

Thank you for the considered reply.

It may be that I don't give sufficient attention to your viewpoint, for which I apologise here.

My only response at this point is to consider this idea of "the temporarily separate human "me" (during physical life and during the initial stages of an afterlife) ".

How do we try to understand that in our theories or conceptual model?

Multiple lives = one single self.

That is the idea we have to grasp. I don't have clever words or smart ideas to resolve that one - many relationship. The best I can do right now (and I arrived at this idea from a different direction, a response to a separate problem) is the idea of an actor in a theatre, playing a role in a stage play. A week or a month from now that actor will be playing someone else in a different play, whether at this theatre or another one somewhere. But when he plays that part, the actor gives his whole self up, surrenders to the role. Before the stage lighting, Olivier is Hamlet. Laurence Olivier is also Richard III.  But we know the actor has his own existence.  Outside the stage. Who is Olivier himself?

Bear in mind here I'm only representing one human life with another human life. This is where the model breaks down.

It is not meant to represent the way things are. I suggest none of us is able to do that, or at any rate we don't have the language and means to express it. I'm not enamoured of the language of philosophy, too often it fails on its dependency upon some initial assumption or proposition, which after a while becomes forgotten, but assumption is the foundation.

I mentioned the concept of an actor playing a role earlier. I first started to use it to describe my life situation as a young person, thrust unprepared onto centre stage. All around me everyone seemed to know their lines. But I knew nothing. Not even knew that there was a stage. Being pressed, I ad-libbed every line. This has been much of my early adult life.

Nowadays, years have passed, I no longer care. But it's important to remember those early days, when I was only playing a role, reluctantly, because such was expected of me.

Thank you for the considered reply.

It may be that I don't give sufficient attention to your viewpoint, for which I apologise here.

My only response at this point is to consider this idea of "the temporarily separate human "me" (during physical life and during the initial stages of an afterlife) ".

How do we try to understand that in our theories or conceptual model?

Multiple lives = one single self.

That is the idea we have to grasp. I don't have clever words or smart ideas to resolve that one - many relationship. The best I can do right now (and I arrived at this idea from a different direction, a response to a separate problem) is the idea of an actor in a theatre, playing a role in a stage play. A week or a month from now that actor will be playing someone else in a different play, whether at this theatre or another one somewhere. But when he plays that part, the actor gives his whole self up, surrenders to the role. Before the stage lighting, Olivier is Hamlet. Laurence Olivier is also Richard III.  But we know the actor has his own existence.  Outside the stage. Who is Olivier himself?

Bear in mind here I'm only representing one human life with another human life. This is where the model breaks down.

It is not meant to represent the way things are. I suggest none of us is able to do that, or at any rate we don't have the language and means to express it. I'm not enamoured of the language of philosophy, too often it fails on its dependency upon some initial assumption or proposition, which after a while becomes forgotten, but assumption is the foundation.

I mentioned the concept of an actor playing a role earlier. I first started to use it to describe my life situation as a young person, thrust unprepared onto centre stage. All around me everyone seemed to know their lines. But I knew nothing. Not even knew that there was a stage. Being pressed, I ad-libbed every line. This has been much of my early adult life.

Nowadays, years have passed, I no longer care. But it's important to remember those early days, when I was only playing a role, reluctantly, because such was expected of me.

Another thing occured to me, regarding your view that you were basically the same person in each of your past lives. It seems to me this is extremely unlikely, because of the genes. It is known that personality characteristics are strongly linked to genetics. Human personality is 30%–60% heritable according to twin and adoption studies. Hundreds of genetic variants are expected to influence its complex development, even though few have been identified. And inevitable differences in upbringing and childhood experiences will also cause hard or impossible to predict differences in personality. 

Anyway, given this, the chances that the mother and father you (as the soul) chose for the next incarnation, and the combination of  the particular sperm and egg that formed you, would have the necessary genetics to come close to your present personality characteristics would be practically nil. It appears that genetics would prevent all the different reincarnated "you's" from being fundamentally the same personality wise. This genetic reason (and differences in childhood experiences) were two of the underlying reasons I came to my provisional starting assumption that all the different incarnations must be very different.