Probably he was wrong. He was after all alive and reliant on the physical body and brain to be able to say anything at all. This attitude towards the body has done incalculable harm I'd say to western culture, esp. as it was understood by medieval christians with their insane 'mortification of the flesh' and so on.
well it isn't our true self. i think that's the main thing. it certainly isn't just illusion either. i mean our phsical forms certainly do exist, well as much as anything IS certain. but the're not who and what we are. our awairness is that, and if this is what socrates, or whoever was trying to say, then in that sense i aggree with them. =^^= .../\...
If by observer you mean the "consciousness", then it's a series of nerves operating in tandem. if by observer you mean the quantum model of an observer crashing the wave function, i believe it's an over reliance on our own importance. It's not that a particle can only have a velocity or a position, it's that by determining either we alter it.
interesting...you seem like you might have some well thought out answers to a couple of questions i like to occasionally ask myself and others. what do you think the difference between living and non-living matter is? when/how do you think this split took place? what do you believe energy is?