TriumphantGeorge Compendium - Part 32

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/r/Oneirosophy Highlights

SIDEBAR: OVERVIEW

Oneirosophy means "dream wisdom"

This is a place for idealists to further their lucidity by discussing techniques and anything else related to idealism. Techniques may include but are not limited to: contemplation of skillful ideas, meditation, magick, yoga, and lucid dreaming. Sympathetic individuals are encouraged to post their own ideas and practices to prompt discussion.

The foundations of Oneirosophy are:

• Lucidity - A state similar to gnosis or satori where one regains consciousness of the illusory nature of waking reality, just as one becomes lucid in a dream.
• Idealism - All of waking reality is a mental structure, a dreamed reality.

Matter is an idea in the mind.

POST: Oneirosophy is not "the secret"

7Kek7: Its not a magic genie lamp that will grant you all of your material desires
I disagree, when I want it to be, it has literally been a genie lamp. Changing one's perspective on experience and letting go of materialism is great. But the real power is in then shaping that experience to one's desires.

Giello: Oneirosophy provides a model through which one might understand how or why the Law of Attraction/"The Secret" works. At least, that's how I see it.

POST: Some quotes from Tibetan Buddhist masters (By dharmadhatu)

When you start to dream, the dream begins as a thought, like one you would have in the daytime. But you’re asleep, so the thought intensifies and becomes something like talk or gossip, and then the gossip intensifies or solidifies into images, and then you really think that you’re seeing people, seeing places, going places, and so on. And that is how it works with conventional appearances as well.
-- Thrangu Rinpoche

At first when you pass into the dream state and images arise, you may not remember where they came from. Your awareness, however, will naturally develop until you will be able to see that you are dreaming. When you watch very carefully, you will be able to see the whole creation and evolution of the dream.
Through this practice, we can see another dimension of experience, and have access to another way of knowing how experience arises. This is important, for when we know this, we can shape our lives. The images which emerge from dream awareness will intensify our waking awareness, allowing us to see more of the nature of existence.
With continuing practice, we see less and less difference between the waking and the dream state. Our experiences in waking life become more vivid and varied, the result of a lighter and more refined awareness. We are no longer bound by conventional conceptions of time, space, [force], and energy. Within this vaster perspective we may also find that the so-called supernatural feats and legends of the great yogis and masters are not myths or miracles. When the consciousness unites the various poles of experience and moves beyond the limits of conventional thought, psychic powers or abilities are actually natural.
-- Tarthang Tulku

POST: Life not feeling real.

A1: Please try cloudbursting. Look at the sky for a few small clouds in a group. Do not tell anyone. Then pick a cloud that you want to disappear. It will. This and other reality-bending experiments will prove to you that your mind is connected to, or maybe the same as, reality itself.

cam you make clouds grow darker? Well over time

dreameraxelos: You can do whatever you want! Everything is part of your dream, so you alone have control. However, some things may seem from your perspective to be more difficult, at least at first. That's why I suggest beginning with making clouds disappear first. It's easier for your mind to accept. Once you have experience with making clouds disappear, you can move on to making them grow, move, appear, darken, lighten, etc.

POST: Why materialism is ultimately rooted in faith. (By cosmicprankster420)

This took me awhile to realize fully, but it was only when I probed into areas which I was hesitant to touch that it made sense. It is a common trope to label the materialistic scientistic types as following a religion, where as the skeptic rebuttal is its not a religion because it is based on evidence rather then faith. Lets really probe into the idea of evidence based reasoning. Now this is something that has been mentioned before on this subreddit, but I think it bears repeating as when investigated it seems to totally follow circular reasoning. Often times non physical anomalies/beings are denied because there is no physical evidence for them. The assumption is that non physical things cannot exist because the world is only physical. Think about this for a second, the skeptic is asking for PHYSICAL evidence for NON PHYSICAL things. This would be akin to someone being skeptical of the existence of solid crystal ice because there is a lack of evidence for it and only accepting evidence of said ice in liquid form. Have you ever wondered why debating with materialists seems like talking to a brick wall? they set up their game so its impossible for them to lose. If there is no evidence for a non physical phenomenon it is deemed unreal. If there is evidence for a non physical phenomenon it is deemed unreal because the evidence for the phenomenon is physical and not non physical. Materialism is ultimately rooted in faith because what lies underneath all of the logical loop holes and parlor tricks is no more then a gut intuition that the world is physical, and the circular logic of only physical evidence based reasoning as valid, further reinforces the faith in materialism. In fact I realize that my inability to question this assumption was based in faith based reasoning left over from consensus thought patterns and the fear of looking crazy.

POST: Contemplation upon the Gospel of Thomas (By aconfusedseeker)

Hello, friends. This sub needs more discussion to get the wheels of contemplation going. Only through contemplation can we progress in the ideas presented to us by oneirosophy. As it would happen, I've stumlbed once again upon Gnosticisim during the uneventful hours in work, and I got to re-read the Gospel of Thomas in multiple translations. However, this time I tried to apply the idea of oneirosophy and subjective idealism upon the riddle of words that Jesus left us in this amazing Gospel. Particularly, I'll nitpick a few passages that struck me as possibly resonant with the dream reality. For this, I'll use the Lambdin translation

(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All."

This really struck a chord with me. When I first delved into non-dualism and oneirosophy, I was grasping at straws when it came to shattering the illusion of this reality. The materialist in me wept as the dogma of Christianity I have lived my not-so-long life and materialism based thinking slowly unraveled to the nature of our dream reality. I was a confused seeker that sought (as my name implies) and as I read more and more I became troubled. Now I am not so much, as I slowly lose fear of death, hell, and nothingness after death. I am astonished. The last words imply that just like subjective idealism proposes, we - every single on of us - could indeed rule over all (mayhap through Solipsism?) in the current reality. What do you think?

(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty and it is you who are that poverty."

The idea that indeed when you outsource the you that you have forgotten you are to somewhere else, you lose control of the dream. The kingdom of the father (Awareness, One) is within you, for you are the aspect of that Awareness that dreams all of realities in all of the time. As within, so without. Non-dualism. If you will not know yourself (as the awareness rather than the dream character), you will be trapped in the idea of materialism and self-inflict upon yourself misery as something that can't be changed, something that is outside of your control (poverty), but once you have known, you will stop being trapped in that (stop being the poverty and as such the source of it).

(4) Jesus said, "The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same."

This brings forth the idea that though we can see a seven old day child, the awareness behind that dream character is so much more than what is presented to us, and as such is presented also an idea of reconciliation into the One, for we come from the One.

(5) Jesus said "Recognize what is in your sight, and that which is hidden from you will become plain to you . For there is nothing hidden which will not become manifest."
(18) The disciples said to Jesus, "Tell us how our end will be." Jesus said, "Have you discovered, then, the beginning, that you look for the end? For where the beginning is, there will the end be. Blessed is he who will take his place in the beginning; he will know the end and will not experience death."
(36) Jesus said, "Do not be concerned from morning until evening and from evening until morning about what you will wear."

Recognize the dream for what it is - a dream, and nothing will be hidden from you, because you as awareness exist out side of time and space (you stand at the beginning and the end), and as such can mold the reality according to your will (manifest what you will). Thus, stop worrying.

(24) His disciples said to him, "Show us the place where you are, since it is necessary for us to seek it." He said to them, "Whoever has ears, let him hear. There is light within a man of light, and he lights up the whole world. If he does not shine, he is darkness."
(42) Jesus said, "Become passers-by."

Become passers-by. Detach yourself from the dream character you experience, even a bit, and observe the dream world for what it is.

(48) Jesus said, "If two make peace with each other in this one house, they will say to the mountain, 'Move Away,' and it will move away."

Perhaps this could be given the context of reconciliation between the dream character and the dreamer (awareness). When if you do, you will be able to change the dream (move mountains).

(77) Jesus said, "It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there."

Maybe Jesus fancied himself a solipsist? :-)

Etc. There are many more passages that could be given the explanation of oneirosophy, while many seem incompatible with the ideas of it. I would love to hear your opinions. 'Tis but one perspective/way of experience of many, but perhaps we can glean something useful to us from it? Put your own spin on it, should you desire. We can learn much from each other.

...

What's the point of ruling over the All?

The better question I think is, "What's not the point?" Try to contemplate on this a bit more before reading on. In the end, you have to come to your own conclusions to any question you ever experience.

Truly, for everyone there will be many points as to why, but I want you to consider that once you achieve that state it is all the points. When you rule over the All, you in essence become the All (or rather, return to it), and every reason for becoming it. Unbound, limitless, like "(77) Jesus said, "It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there." "

For example for you personally by your previous thread on this sub, I would say that it would mean liberation from the assumption of being created by the position of planets and instead becoming the creator of planets, so to speak. A flip in perspective and being. Reconciliation with your true self.

One could also assume that the whole proclamation Jesus made was an Ego trap. It is the Ego that drives you to power, which this phrase implies to promise. But when you strengthen the Ego, you solidify the dream character you play and thus solidify the dream instead of loosing it to achieve that state of true self.

POST: An Interesting Thought (By CriticalMission)

When we are awake, we know that we are due to internal and "external" factors. First off, our mind is at a heightened state of awareness, as we can logically reason about many complex ideas. Additionally, we "feel" that our environment is stable. Everything is as we remember it, in that we have an innate understanding that we are living in the world we've always know. On top of this, we have certain tests that we can conduct on our environment. These tests can be similar to those tests that lucid dreamers use, known as reality checks. For example, if we look at a clock, look away, and then look back we know that the time will either be the same or be different by one minute. Yet when we are dreaming, the clock will often show vastly different results each time that we look at it. But what if we have it all wrong? What if our dreams are a more true reality than the physical? Think about it. When we are awake we are very limited by the world around us. There are rules that we must follow. It's almost like we're trapped in a certain state of existence. Yet when we're dreaming we become free; anything is possible. And the more we dream lucidly, the more stable our dream environment becomes. Eventually one can lucid dream so much that one can begin to blur the boundaries between one's dreams and reality. The more powerful a dreamer becomes, the more "real" their dreams seem to be. Some can even experience dreams that "feel" more real than reality itself.

When we dream we have the power to control everything with our minds. Does this not seem like the most powerful state of awareness anyone can be in? The ancient stories of enlightened thinkers discuss beings who can manipulate physical reality with their thoughts. For example, Jesus of Nazareth was said to have brought someone back from the dead, cured the terminally ill, and gave a blind man the gift of sight. Whether you believe that these events actually occurred, or if they are possible is beyond the point. What matters here is the fact that someone capable of these acts would be considered to exist within a higher state of existence. When we dream, we exist within this higher state of existence. We are not bound by the laws of physics. We can fly, teleport, shape shift, manifest anything instantly, we're virtually limitless. We can still hear, taste, and touch. We can see and smell. We become untethered.

I once had a dream of myself just standing in the street. I was across from the home I grew up in. The crazy part is, everything was indistinguishable from my waking state. One moment I was lying in bed, eyes closed, everything black. The next, it felt as if my eyes were immediately opened. I could see the grass and the road. The mailboxes, the sky, the clouds; all from the point of view of … myself. I looked down and saw my palms. I turned them up and down to acknowledge I was truly there. And then I woke up. Back into the darkness. Dreams are often not realized to be such until we awaken. But what if physical reality constitutes the real dream? We wouldn't know it until we wake up. Yet oftentimes when we sleep, we are not conscious. What if this is by design? We're not meant to be conscious when we dream because then we would wake up. We would realize that this physical reality is a construct build around us, not our true reality. We would realize that this world is more like a game than anything else. That the limitations around us are simply obstacles to be surpassed. That we play this game with ourselves because there's nothing else to do but to expand our consciousness, and this a means to that end. An organized, ordered world where we can think and interact in such a way that allows us to advance our understanding of the world around us.

May your dreams set you free.

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Appendix: Relevant Terminology

Philosophy

Philosophy (from Ancient Greek philosophía lit. 'love of wisdom') is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, knowledge, mind, reason, language, and value. It is a rational and critical inquiry that reflects on its methods and assumptions.

Ontology

Ontology is the philosophical study of being. It is traditionally understood as the subdiscipline of metaphysics focused on the most general features of reality. As one of the most fundamental concepts, being encompasses all of reality and every entity within it.

Epistemology

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called the theory of knowledge, it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony.

Metaphysics

Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that examines the basic structure of reality. It is traditionally seen as the study of mind-independent features of the world, but some theorists view it as an inquiry into the conceptual framework of human understanding. Some philosophers, including Aristotle, designate metaphysics as first philosophy to suggest that it is more fundamental than other forms of philosophical inquiry.
Metaphysics encompasses a wide range of general and abstract topics. It investigates the nature of existence, the features all entities have in common, and their division into categories of being. An influential division is between particulars and universals. Particulars are individual unique entities, like a specific apple. Universals are general features that different particulars have in common, like the color red. Modal metaphysics examines what it means for something to be possible or necessary. Metaphysicians also explore the concepts of space, time, and change, and their connection to causality and the laws of nature. Other topics include how mind and matter are related, whether everything in the world is predetermined, and whether there is free will.
Metaphysicians use various methods to conduct their inquiry. Traditionally, they rely on rational intuitions and abstract reasoning but have recently included empirical approaches associated with scientific theories. Due to the abstract nature of its topic, metaphysics has received criticisms questioning the reliability of its methods and the meaningfulness of its theories. Metaphysics is relevant to many fields of inquiry that often implicitly rely on metaphysical concepts and assumptions.

The beginning of Aristotle's Metaphysics, one of the foundational texts of the discipline

Nondualism

Nondualism, also called nonduality and sometimes monism, is a polyvalent term originating in Indian philosophy and religion, where it is used in various, related contemplative philosophies which aim to negate dualistic thinking or conceptual proliferation (prapanca) and thereby realize nondual awareness, 'that which is beyond discursive thinking', a state of consciousness described in contemplative traditions as a background field of unified, immutable awareness that exists prior to conceptual thought.
The English term "nonduality" is derived from the Sanskrit Hindu term "advaita" (अद्वैत), "not-two" or "one without a second," meaning that only Brahman, 'the one', is ultimately real while 'the world', or the multiplicity of thought-constructs, 'the second', is not fully real; and from the Buddhist term advaya, which is also literally translated as "not two" and has various applications, including the Madhyamaka negation of thinking in opposites such as ordinary, conventional truth versus ultimate truth, and in Yogachara the deconstruction of the "apprehension of sensory objects as separate from the perceiving consciousness."
A perennialist view posits that nondual awareness, despite fundamental differences in the explanatory frameworks, is a common essence in various religious traditions. According to this view, nondual awareness is not only paradigmatic for Hindu advaita-traditions including Advaita Vedanta and Kashmir Shaivism, and Buddhist advaya-traditions including Yogachara, Madhyamaka, Zen and Dzogchen, but can also be found in Taoist philosophy, and in Western philosophy, Christian mysticism, and Sufism.
Nondualism is also used to refer to the satsang movement, also called neo-advaita, for which nonduality is a central tenet, emphasizing sudden awakening or insight. The term may also refer to monism and nonplurality, the idea of a unitive essence behind the multiplicity of distinct entities. Related definitions include interconnectedness interdependence, and holism or 'wholism', the idea that "all the things "in" the world are not really distinct from each other but together constitute some integral whole." Further definitions are the rejection of thinking in binary opposites such as the mind–body dualism, while "nondualism" is also used as a synonym for mysticism, mystical experience, and spirituality.

Gnosticism

Gnosticism (from Ancient Greek γνωστικός (gnōstikós) 'having knowledge'; Koine Greek: [ɣnostiˈkos]) is a collection of religious and philosophical ideas and systems that coalesced in the late first century AD among early Christian sects and the sects of other religions. These diverse groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the authority, traditions, and proto-orthodox teachings of organized religious institutions. The Gnostic worldview generally distinguished between a hidden, uncorrupted supreme being and a flawed demiurge responsible for creating material reality. Gnostics held this material existence to be evil and believed the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the supreme divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment.
Gnosis is a feminine Greek noun which means "knowledge" or "awareness". It and the associated verb are often used for personal knowledge, as compared with intellectual knowledge (Greek verb εἴδειν eídein). A related term is the adjective gnostikos, "of or for knowledge", a reasonably common adjective in Classical Greek.
Jesus is identified by some Gnostics as an embodiment of the supreme being who became incarnate to bring gnōsis to the earth, while others adamantly denied that the supreme being came in the flesh, claiming Jesus to be merely a human who attained enlightenment through gnosis and taught his disciples to do the same. Others believed that Jesus was divine but did not have a physical body, reflected in the later Docetist movement. Among the Mandaeans, Jesus was considered a mšiha kdaba or "false messiah" who perverted the teachings entrusted to him by John the Baptist. Still other traditions identify Mani, the founder of Manichaeism, and Seth, third son of Adam and Eve, as salvific figures.

Gnosis

Gnosis is the common Greek noun for knowledge (γνῶσις, gnōsis).The term was used among various Hellenistic religions and philosophies in the Greco-Roman world. It is best known for its implication within Gnosticism, where it signifies a spiritual knowledge or insight into humanity's real nature as divine, leading to the deliverance of the divine spark within humanity from the constraints of earthly existence.
Gnosis is a feminine Greek noun which means "knowledge" or "awareness." It is often used for personal knowledge as opposed to intellectual knowledge (εἴδειν eídein), as with the French connaître compared with savoir, the Portuguese conhecer compared with saber, the Spanish conocer compared with saber, the Italian conoscere compared with sapere, the German kennen rather than wissen, or the Modern Greek γνωρίζω compared with ξέρω. A related term is the adjective gnostikos, "cognitive", a reasonably common adjective in Classical Greek. The terms do not appear to indicate any mystic, esoteric or hidden meaning in the works of Plato, but instead expressed a sort of higher intelligence and ability analogous to talent.

Monism

Monism attributes oneness or singleness (Greek: μόνος) to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:

• Priority monism states that all existing things go back to a source that is distinct from them; e.g., in Neoplatonism everything is derived from The One. In this view only the One is ontologically fundamental or prior to everything else.
• Existence monism posits that, strictly speaking, there exists only a single thing, the universe, which can only be artificially and arbitrarily divided into many things.
• Substance monism asserts that a variety of existing things can be explained in terms of a single reality or substance. Substance monism posits that only one kind of substance exists, although many things may be made up of this substance, e.g., matter or mind.
• Dual-aspect monism is the view that the mental and the physical are two aspects of, or perspectives on, the same substance.
• Neutral monism believes the fundamental nature of reality to be neither mental nor physical; in other words it is "neutral".
• Political monism is sometimes used to describe political concepts, such as unitarianism, based on certain principles like ethnicity or identity.
  There are two sorts of definitions for monism:
• The wide definition: a philosophy is monistic if it postulates unity of the origin of all things; all existing things return to a source that is distinct from them.
• The restricted definition: this requires not only unity of origin but also unity of substance and essence.
  Although the term monism is derived from Western philosophy to typify positions in the mind–body problem, it has also been used to typify religious traditions. In modern Hinduism, the term "absolute monism" has been applied to Advaita Vedanta, though Philip Renard points out that this may be a Western interpretation, bypassing the intuitive understanding of a nondual reality. It is more generally categorized by scholars as a form of absolute nondualism.

The circled dot was used by the Pythagoreans and later Greeks to represent the first metaphysical being, the Monad or The Absolute.

Neoplatonism

Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common ideas it maintains is monism, the doctrine that all of reality can be derived from a single principle, "the One".
The Enneads of Plotinus are the primary and classical document of neoplatonism. As a form of mysticism, it contains theoretical and practical parts. The theoretical parts deal with the high origin of the human soul, showing how it has departed from its first estate. The practical parts show the way by which the soul may again return to the Eternal and Supreme. The system can be divided between the invisible world and the phenomenal world, the former containing the transcendent, absolute One from which emanates an eternal, perfect, essence (nous, or intellect), which, in turn, produces the world-soul.

Mysticism

Mysticism encompasses religious traditions of human transformation aided by various practices and religious experiences. Popularly, mysticism is used synonymously with mystical experience, a neologism which refers to an ecstatic unitive experience of becoming one with God, the Absolute, or all that exists. Broadly defined, mysticism as a way of personal transformation can be found in a number of religious traditions, including Western mysticism and Western esotericism, Sufism, Buddhism, and Hinduism.

Magic

Magic, sometimes spelled magick,is the application of beliefs, rituals or actions employed in the belief that they can manipulate natural or supernatural beings and forces. It is a category into which have been placed various beliefs and practices sometimes considered separate from both religion and science.

Magick

Ceremonial magic (also known as magick, ritual magic, high magic or learned magic) encompasses a wide variety of rituals of magic. The synonym magick is an archaic spelling of 'magic' used during the Renaissance, which was revived by Aleister Crowley to differentiate occult magic from stage magic. He defined it as "the Science and Art of causing Change to occur in conformity with Will", including ordinary acts of will as well as ritual magic. Crowley wrote that "it is theoretically possible to cause in any object any change of which that object is capable by nature". Crowley saw magic as the essential method for a person to reach true understanding of the self and to act according to one's true will, which he saw as the reconciliation "between freewill and destiny."

Thelema

Thelema is a Western esoteric and occult social or spiritual philosophy and a new religious movement founded in the early 1900s by Aleister Crowley (1875–1947), an English writer, mystic, occultist, and ceremonial magician. Central to Thelema is the concept of discovering and following one's True Will, a divine and individual purpose that transcends ordinary desires. Crowley's system begins with The Book of the Law, a text he maintained was dictated to him by a non-corporeal entity named Aiwass. This work outlines key principles, including the axioms "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law" and "love is the law, love under will", emphasizing personal freedom and the pursuit of one's true path.
Magick is a central practice in Thelema, involving various physical, mental, and spiritual exercises aimed at uncovering one's True Will and enacting change in alignment with it. Practices such as rituals, yoga, and meditation are used to explore consciousness and achieve self-mastery.

Idealism

Idealism in philosophy, also known as philosophical idealism or metaphysical idealism, is the set of metaphysical perspectives asserting that, most fundamentally, reality is equivalent to mind, spirit, or consciousness; that reality or truth is entirely a mental construct; or that ideas are the highest type of reality or have the greatest claim to being considered "real". Because there are different types of idealism, it is difficult to define the term uniformly.
Indian philosophy contains some of the first defenses of idealism, such as in Vedanta and in Shaiva Pratyabhijña thought. These systems of thought argue for an all-pervading consciousness as the true nature and ground of reality. Idealism is also found in some streams of Mahayana Buddhism, such as in the Yogācāra school, which argued for a "mind-only" (cittamatra) philosophy on an analysis of subjective experience. In the West, idealism traces its roots back to Plato in ancient Greece, who proposed that absolute, unchanging, timeless ideas constitute the highest form of reality: Platonic idealism. This was revived and transformed in the early modern period by Immanuel Kant's arguments that our knowledge of reality is completely based on mental structures: transcendental idealism.
Epistemologically, idealism is accompanied by a rejection of the possibility of knowing the existence of any thing independent of mind. Ontologically, idealism asserts that the existence of all things depends upon the mind; thus, ontological idealism rejects the perspectives of physicalism and dualism. In contrast to materialism, idealism asserts the primacy of consciousness as the origin and prerequisite of all phenomena.

Transcendental Idealism

Transcendental idealism is a philosophical system founded by German philosopher Immanuel Kant in the 18th century. Kant's epistemological program is found throughout his Critique of Pure Reason (1781). By transcendental (a term that deserves special clarification) Kant means that his philosophical approach to knowledge transcends mere consideration of sensory evidence and requires an understanding of the mind's innate modes of processing that sensory evidence.
In the "Transcendental Aesthetic" section of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant outlines how space and time are pure forms of human intuition contributed by our own faculty of sensibility. Space and time do not have an existence "outside" of us, but are the "subjective" forms of our sensibility and hence the necessary a priori conditions under which the objects we encounter in our experience can appear to us at all. Kant describes time and space not only as "empirically real" but transcendentally ideal.
Kant argues that the conscious subject recognizes the objects of experience not as they are in themselves, but only the way they appear to us under the conditions of our sensibility. This fits his model of perception outlined at the outset of the "Transcendental Aesthetic" by which he distinguishes the empirical reality of appearances studied by the empirical sciences from the noumenal reality of things as they are in themselves, independent of empirical observation. Thus Kant's doctrine restricts the scope of our cognition to appearances given to our sensibility and denies that we can possess cognition of things as they are in themselves, i.e. things as they are independently of how we experience them through our cognitive faculties.

Perennial philosophy

The perennial philosophy (Latin: philosophia perennis), also referred to as perennialism and perennial wisdom, is a school of thought in philosophy and spirituality that posits that the recurrence of common themes across world religions illuminates universal truths about the nature of reality, humanity, ethics, and consciousness. Some perennialists emphasize common themes in religious experiences and mystical traditions across time and cultures; others argue that religious traditions share a single metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine have developed.
Developments in the 19th and 20th centuries integrated Eastern religions and universalism—the idea that all religions, underneath apparent differences, point to the same Truth. In the early 19th century, the Transcendentalists propagated the idea of a metaphysical Truth and universalism—this inspired the Unitarians, who proselytized among Indian elites. Toward the end of the 19th century, the Theosophical Society further popularized universalism in the Western world and Western colonies. In the 20th century, this form of universalist perennialism was further popularized by Aldous Huxley and his book The Perennial Philosophy, which was inspired by Neo-Vedanta. Huxley and some other perennialists grounded their point of view in the commonalities of mystical experience and generally accepted religious syncretism.
Perennialists often ground their position in what they call a "common core" of religious wisdom which is found across traditions. They argue that since many of these themes developed independent of contact between the cultures concerned, they are likely to point to deeper truths from anthropological, phenomenological and/or metaphysical perspectives. Perennialists generally make a distinction between the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of the various religions, arguing that the exoteric doctrinal differences are cultural in nature, but that the mystical traditions of these religious use the language of these doctrines and cultural forms to express identical or similar things.

One of two known editions of the title page of William Blake's All Religions are One, published in 1795

Skepticism

Skepticism (US) or scepticism (UK) is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases, skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief, i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology.

Solipsism

Solipsism (/ˈsɒlɪpsɪzəm/ ⓘ SOLL-ip-siz-əm; from Latin solus 'alone' and ipse 'self') is the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist. As an epistemological position, solipsism holds that knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is unsure; the external world and other minds cannot be known and might not exist outside the mind.
There are varying degrees of solipsism that parallel the varying degrees of skepticism:

• Metaphysical solipsism is a variety of solipsism based on a philosophy of subjective idealism. Metaphysical solipsists maintain that the self is the only existing reality and that all other realities, including the external world and other persons, are representations of that self, having no independent existence. There are several versions of metaphysical solipsism, such as Caspar Hare's egocentric presentism (or perspectival realism), in which other people are conscious, but their experiences are simply not present.
• Epistemological solipsism is the variety of idealism according to which only the directly accessible mental contents of the solipsistic philosopher can be known. The existence of an external world is regarded as an unresolvable question rather than actually false. Further, one cannot also be certain as to what extent the external world exists independently of one's mind. For instance, it may be that a God-like being controls the sensations received by the mind, making it appear as if there is an external world when most of it (excluding the God-like being and oneself) is false. However, the point remains that epistemological solipsists consider this an "unresolvable" question.
• Methodological solipsism is an agnostic variant of solipsism. It exists in opposition to the strict epistemological requirements for "knowledge" (e.g. the requirement that knowledge must be certain). It still entertains the points that any induction is fallible. Methodological solipsism sometimes goes even further to say that even what we perceive as the brain is actually part of the external world, for it is only through our senses that we can see or feel the mind. Only the existence of thoughts is known for certain. Methodological solipsists do not intend to conclude that the stronger forms of solipsism are actually true. They simply emphasize that justifications of an external world must be founded on indisputable facts about their own consciousness. The methodological solipsist believes that subjective impressions (empiricism) or innate knowledge (rationalism) are the sole possible or proper starting point for philosophical construction. Often methodological solipsism is not held as a belief system, but rather used as a thought experiment to assist skepticism (e.g. René Descartes' Cartesian skepticism).

Pragmatism

Pragmatism is a philosophical tradition that views language and thought as tools for prediction, problem solving, and action, rather than describing, representing, or mirroring reality. Pragmatists contend that most philosophical topics—such as the nature of knowledge, language, concepts, meaning, belief, and science—are best viewed in terms of their practical uses and successes.
Pragmatism began in the United States in the 1870s. Its origins are often attributed to philosophers Charles Sanders Peirce, William James and John Dewey. In 1878, Peirce described it in his pragmatic maxim: "Consider the practical effects of the objects of your conception. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object."
James and Dewey were empirical thinkers in the most straightforward fashion: experience is the ultimate test and experience is what needs to be explained. They were dissatisfied with ordinary empiricism because, in the tradition dating from Hume, empiricists had a tendency to think of experience as nothing more than individual sensations. To the pragmatists, this went against the spirit of empiricism: we should try to explain all that is given in experience including connections and meaning, instead of explaining them away and positing sense data as the ultimate reality. Radical empiricism, or Immediate Empiricism in Dewey's words, wants to give a place to meaning and value instead of explaining them away as subjective additions to a world of whizzing atoms.
Radical empiricism gives answers to questions about the limits of science, the nature of meaning and value and the workability of reductionism. These questions feature prominently in current debates about the relationship between religion and science, where it is often assumed—most pragmatists would disagree—that science degrades everything that is meaningful into "merely" physical phenomena.
Brazilian social thinker Roberto Unger advocates for a radical pragmatism, one that "de-naturalizes" society and culture, and thus insists that we can "transform the character of our relation to social and cultural worlds we inhabit rather than just to change, little by little, the content of the arrangements and beliefs that comprise them". Late Rorty and Jürgen Habermas are closer to Continental thought.