TriumphantGeorge Compendium - Part 27

POST: My problem with most reality theories

It is my opinion that existence does not operate in any definable manner at all, we cannot postulate on existence by taking the laws and parameters that we believe govern our subjective experience of reality and assume that the rest of existence is in any way related to those laws and parameters.

The core problem is that experience leaves traces and those traces in-form subsequent experiences. We cannot separate the structure of mind from the apparent structure of experience. Mainly because, to us, they are one and the same thing.

And finally occam's razor, the simplest explanation to me for things existing, is that they don't.

In a sense. "Exist" is difficult - perhaps better to say they don't exist in the sense that our typical world-description would assume. We can't "represent" existence, because either both the existence and the representation occur within the same field of observation, or we use the term existence to represent everything, which is meaningless.

Thanks for the reply, I'm glad you understand the difficulty and inherent problems with trying to communicate something like this.

It's difficult, but I think so long as the people having a conversation understand that it's difficult (i.e. don't get frustrated at each other because it's so obvious to them) then they can feel their way along.

existing/not existing are not singular states even if they are both definable to an extent.

Yes. So, a shadow 'exists' but it does not exist in the sense of being a separate thing to the object that casts the shadow. It would be tempting to say that the object is 'more real' than the shadow. But actually neither the object nor the shadow 'exist' without the light source which makes them both visible, so it is relative. From the perspective of the light source, the shadow and object are equally real. Yeah, wishy-washy pretty fast! :-)

For instance if you hypothetically could draw a diagram representation, how do you include your perspective of the representation within the representation...

It gets pretty folded, pretty quickly - infinite regression. Right, we have to declare one "observational level" as the foundation. I think we can do this. It's time for today's made-up metaphor! I think it's something like this:

Today's Metaphor: The Single Sheet of Paper

I have a sheet of paper. It has a line dividing it into two, and on the left side is a picture of a vivid 3D cube drawn in amazing technicolour. The right side is blank. The right side is where I can draw to think, represent. However, my drawing skills aren't that great (I can only do 2D) and my tools limited (only got red and blue crayons). But I draw the best representation that I can: a blue and red square. Okay, now I think to myself: I've represented the cube, how about I represent my representation? To do this, I don't need another level or whatever. I simply draw another blue and red square on the right side, with a little arrow pointing to the first square I drew. On the left we have "the external world". On the right we have "my thoughts about the external world" and "my thoughts about my thoughts". No infinite regress. I can have as many "thoughts about thoughts" as I like without going to a deeper level. Importantly, all of this happens on the same single sheet of paper. My aware space. My mind.

I feel compelled to mention I'm by no means as well read as a lot of people here, and what I write is pure conjecture, so there are bound to be contradictions/inconsistencies floating around

:-)

Being well-read just means you have read more. Being good at reading, being good at thinking-about-thinking is no guarantee of insight. More important to be open and curious. After all, it might be that the world we experience is inherently inconsistent. Then all those neatnik little reader-thinker folk would be screwed, wouldn't they? ;-)

...

It's starting to drive me crazy, that there are NO substantive posts with a feasible, logical, rational structure to them.

Well, lots of people are just trying and struggling to put their experiences into words - and often finding that they don't quite fit. Also, they are sometimes trying to describe something which is before logic and reasoning: That which experiences logic and reasoning (and absurdity and intuition and everything else). They are trying to describe what experiences are "made from", but you can't get outside experience in order to do this, and it's meaningless to talk of logical representations of an experience of void, say. Although I'd agree that you have to go one way or the other - half-logic is no path at all.

Experience only can come from a background of pure logic and reason underlying the very fabric of reality.

I disagree. Logic and reason aren't the base, the underlying fabric of reality. They are certainly patterns or pathways which experience may flow along - by which I mean both thought and perception - and they might even be some of the most stable pathways, but they only seem to be the foundation because they are common and become entrenched due to repeated activation. They are hard to describe in words, yes, because they are more subtle than words - words are "too late". But they at least do correspond somewhat with the structure of language, and so can be captured to some extent. Which is why they get confused with the basic level of reality - because they can be thought about and more subtle structures can't because they barely correspond to language at all. (This also means they become disproportionately reinforced by communication.)

Logical pathways might be "lowest common denominator" pathways. If every experience we have leaves a memory trace in our minds, which then funnels subsequent experience in a self-reinforcing cycle, then it would seem as if reality was built upon those pathways. They would seem to be external laws. In fact, though, this would be equivalent to simply thinking about something an awful lot ("red cars"), subsequently noticing those things after being so primed (red cars in the street), thinking about them some more ("gosh, lots of red cars"), in a passive loop. It would seem that reality was built a certain way, when in fact the 'shape of your mind' had been deformed. You could never tell the difference. In fact, there would be no difference...

It could be argued that surely only patterns that were common "out there" could lead to such stable patterns, and so patterns of mind = patterns of external reality, but there would be no way to test this. We can't point to external reality - where is it? In some parallel space beyond this room? Where is the real hand that could do the pointing anyway?

After all, when did we "wake up" and start thinking about this stuff? Who knows what patterns have been accumulated before then! If we are all one, then really there is only one mind anyway, and so there need be no fundamental solid underlying at all. Just, accumulated patterns from a random noise, eventually clustering into meaningless paths, from which our arbitrary world emerged. It seems meaningful, but only because "meaning" arose by the same process. All you have to experiment with, is the flexibility of your own experience. No maybes. ;-)

[QUOTE]

Clustering illusion
The clustering illusion is the tendency to erroneously consider the inevitable "streaks" or "clusters" arising in small samples from random distributions to be non-random. The illusion is caused by a human tendency to underpredict the amount of variability likely to appear in a small sample of random or pseudorandom data.

1,000 points randomly distributed inside a square, showing apparent clusters and empty spaces

[END OF QUOTE]

There aren't 'minds' at all, we are just analogue computers which perform i/o.

I disagree that we are analogue computers. "Minds" is just a word we use to (fictionally) encapsulate a set of experiences when we talk about them.

We think about thinking, but we don't even know what a thought really is. It isn't 'anything' more than a pattern.

It isn't any-thing, that's true. And it is a pattern. But following the input-execute analogy doesn't really lead us anywhere surely. There's no evidence for it in our experience, for starters, it's just a visualisation that some people find attractive. Although your (implied) notion patterns unfolding spontaneously along "the curve" is a nice description.

There's no evidence for input-execute in our experience? What? Go read a neuroscience book, or hell, even just an informative article, you fucking hippie scum... srsly jesus christ. ew. so glad i don't reject anything that has 'weight' to it. you just write off everything because everything 'is nothing' in your view. Have fun with that crap, m8. I'd like to see the kind of moral code you've built up for yourself with that attitude... Or maybe I don't want to see it, because it's probably abhorrent.

Somebody got out of bed the wrong way? ;-)

Maybe you need to spend a bit more time reading critically and also paying attention to how you actually experience the world. Neuroscience, despite its many advances in other areas, has made very little progress when it comes to understanding how we come to perceive a "world" or the larger area of consciousness. We might be able to track brain activity from eye to brain, but we don't see "processing" of that into a "world". And it's hard to see how it ever could at present. There are currently no theories about how consciousness arises.

The signal-path/processing/construction metaphor just doesn't seem to work any better than the clockwork metaphor or the steam metaphor before it. We can't even locate memories in the brain. There's interesting stuff going on [https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/science/learning-how-little-we-know-about-the-brain.html], but it mainly reveals how little progress we've made. But the way that minimal progress becomes turned into blanket enthusiasm and even public policy [https://archive.nytimes.com/op-talk.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/11/24/can-brain-science-be-dangerous/?mabReward=RI%3A5] is somewhat dubious.

That there is a link between brain and experience is certain, but the nature of that connection is... hazy to say the least. For all we can tell, we might be the equivalent of The Electric Ant [https://sickmyduck.narod.ru/pkd077-0.html].

Donald Hoffman's interface theory of perception is perhaps one of the more hopeful approaches (see here [https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/interface.pdf] and more speculatively here [https://sites.socsci.uci.edu/~ddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf], lecture here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI] covers the issues). The problem remains that the brain as studied is itself a representation in mind, and we have a terrible habit of literally seeing our metaphors without recognising it. (Hence it being important to bear in mind that the "objects" we divide experience into aren't necessarily "out there". Wherever that is.)

Meanwhile, physicists (the late) David Bohm and Basil Hiley's work on wholeness and the implicate order is an interesting approach - see here [Dead link] for a good interview.

• The short version: Current models and metaphors are crap; they don't fit our experiences; we need to explore the nature of perception - and hence the apparent world - more; the future of neuroscience as an explanatory approach is just faith.
• My moral code: Is probably much more inclusive and considerate than someone who thinks we live in a world where "there aren't 'minds' at all" and other people are just "analogue computers which perform i/o".

Consciousness can't be described because it isn't a thing.

I would agree with that statement (although perhaps not in the way you meant it).

We think we are conscious, but what convinced you of that?

This is mistaken. It is independent of thinking. Sure, I can think, "I am conscious" but that's just a thought - but it is a thought within my awareness. By attending to the space around that thought, or the context of my experience more generally, I discover that I directly experience right now that I am aware. Or more correctly in this first-person view, that I am this awareness. I don't think this is something that can be thought about (because thoughts appear within and are made from this; consciousness is not an object). But it is a direct truth.

Why do people emphasize the fact we can perceive consciouslly?

Because it is their fundamental experience and any description of the world which does not account for it (or at least admit to starting from it) is incomplete. The phrasing "we perceive consciously" is problematic perhaps. Perceptions appear to us; we don't "do" perception. We must account for this also. Perception might be "ordinary" in the sense of being familiar and ever-present, but that does not mean it needs no examination. Quite the contrary. Right now you are sat in front of a screen, reading this text. If you sit back, you can feel the space in the room, become aware of all its contents. Simultaneously, you experience a sense of the place you are "looking out from". Also, any thoughts which are arising, any body sensations. Additionally, you can now think-about those these experiences. Behind all that, there is a sense of "presence". Now, you can think the words "I am just a computer, this is all programmed". But this really doesn't account for the experience at all. What I'm doing is replacing experience with a thought about it.

(And the more you take the time to examine your experience, the more you'll discover there's lots of other stuff going on. Exploring how actions and thoughts happen, how experiences snap into formations, and how adopting a certain set of ideas actually changes your actual perceptions.)

As for moral code, if we are all computers executing code, then we can never blame ourselves but rather only the situation in which code was executed. Can't be mad at people, ever, with that worldview.

If we are all "computers executing code", then we have no choice whether to blame ourselves, or be made at people, or not - or indeed anything. There is a quick cheat to all this, of course: You can insert "consciousness" as the base level material in the universe and have everything else as "patterns of consciousness".

(Christof Koch's panpsychism [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-consciousness-universal/] does take a half step there, but not quite because he hold onto a certain notion of consciousness-and-object. Many otherwise interesting formulations [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-theory-of-consciousness/] stumble by confusing the content of consciousness with consciousness itself. Also, confusions between consciousness, self-consciousness, awareness and attention persist.)

What makes you convinced you are 'aware'? Isn't that one of those symbols your mind made up?

You highlight an important point, you get to the essence of this.

-- It is simply directly true that awareness is my experience; it is experience itself. --

It is not symbolic.

This is different to thinking about being aware.

We could maybe say there are two types of truth:

• Direct Truth. I touch a pillow. The pillow is soft. It is directly true that I am having the experience of softness. Or rather, that softness is my experience. The feeling of "direct sensation". Although I am using words to describe this, I stress that this experience is not itself symbolic.
• Conceptual Truth. This is the truth of a coherent system of thought. A set of thoughts which fit together. That is conceptual, logical or symbolic truth. The "feeling" of an argument "making sense". Note that a conceptual framework can be entirely self-consistent, have this feeling associated with it, and yet be largely disconnected with perceptual experience, the direct facts of the world.

Both experiences occur within the same "conscious space". Being aware is the direct truth of the background sensation in which other experiences (direct perceptions and thoughts) appear. It is difficult to talk about this though, because not only is it not symbolic (it can't be experienced as Conceptual Truth), it is also not an object (so it is a Direct Truth but without a "thing" I can attach it to, unlike the pillow). Rather, it is the background which takes on the shape of those experiences, the context and the material for experiential objects. Excuse the struggle for wording there; it's the nature of the topic!

...

EDIT: Somewhat of a long reply. The dangers of typing in a 5-line-high box on a tablet. Added headings to break it up a bit. EDIT2: Just tidied up some bad formatting and phrasing after previewing.

No Mechanism: Awareness & Content

saying that awareness is the 'background' means that anything can be aware without a mechanism of awareness...

Yes. Awareness itself can be taken for granted. There is no mechanism. In fact, logically, it the only way to get things to work. The content and structure of experience is something else though. Our wormy friend isn't having the same sort of experience as us. However, his background and the nature of his experience is the same. Remember, by "awareness" I mean literally just "being aware". This is not about self-reflection or thought associations or whatever.

No Connection: Awareness & Space-Time

it's not connecting to this universal hyperfabric of awareness that permeates through everything...

There is no connection to anything. Do waves have to "connect" to the water? (Excuse me reusing a hackneyed metaphor.)

In a way, there is nothing special about this. We could ask "what is matter made from"? And hit the same problems. You might eventually answer something like "it is patterns formed by the bending of space-time". Well, maybe think of a base material whose only property is that of being-aware. That's all it does. If we "fold" that material into shapes, then we have awareness-experiencing-a-folded-shape. The more complex the shapes...

Well, this is basically the "matter/space-time" story, but with consciousness built in, inserted at the fundamental level. We get all the goodies of science, but no mind-body problem.

I guess doing drugs and thinking 'outside the box' can lead people to that conclusion, but what basis is there?

I think what happens in those experiences is that the habitual structures of mind relax somewhat, and the feeling of 'open awareness' or 'open space' becomes more apparent because it is less clouded. Like those figure/ground illustrations.

No Built-In Structure: Emergent Stability

I guess my final statement is this: why are things differential if there isn't some sort of inherent logical structure built into reality? what would have caused reality to develop the structure which allows this universal awareness that is everything/everywhere to exist?

As hinted above, we have to take "open unstructured awareness" as the starting point. This starting point is, remember, before divisions of any sort. We might use the metaphor of a blanket which then gets folded into patterns, but of course that implies a spatiality that awareness does not possess: it is not a "thing", it is formless. But things may be formed within it, but at the same time it will always remain unbroken. It has no structure; it is before structure. Therefore it is inherently everything, everywhere, always.

Taking that starting point, we can then allow the universe to come into being quite straightforwardly. Perhaps using a simple model of random fluctuations appearing, which then cluster into patterns, which self-reinforce and form more persistent structures - habits, if you will. Regularities. You could even call them "laws".

And so there comes to be a feedback mechanism: Patterns arise, leaving traces, which funnel future patterns, and so the universe tends towards stability. This applies to the universe at large, but also to our own localised experiences - and in fact those turn out to be identical.

In effect, we only need one type of metaphor to describe everything. We have:

• A "landscape" of awareness upon which the "rain" of random fluctuations falls.
• The rain erodes the landscape, leading to channels, which channels future rain.
• Before you know it, you've got a highly complex, stable world, but still with an inherent creativity and a possibility of change.

No Worries: Thoughts & Intentions

There's an additional component of intention and individual minds - by which I just mean localised areas of awareness - but even that follows the same mechanism: Thoughts would leave traces too, explaining why adopting a viewpoint appears to deform one's direct experience.

This accounts for our tendency to 'see what we believe' - repetitive thinking, or thinking while in a certain type of open mode, literally restructures our mind. (It's reasonable to ask "where is that structure?" - and it is in fact directly accessible, it's just subtle compared with the ongoing foreground experience of sounds & sights & thoughts.)

Intention might therefore be described as a "wilful deformation" of the patterns within awareness.

'localised areas of awareness' - I thought your whole point was that everything is aware... how can it be localized then?

Everything is aware, it is continuous and delocalised. Patterns, however, are not. The "sky" is everywhere, a particular "cloud" is not.

In your analogy: the landscape, the awareness untouched, it has these random fluctuations, but somehow these are separate from the landscape while also being a part of the landscape, eroding the landscape.

It's all made of the same thing. It's just a metaphor to illustrate the evolution of the world. To use words, you have to partition things up unfortunately. But it's quite hard to describe a self-fluctuating, self-memorising, self-experiencing, aware surface that has no sides or edges and is therefore not even a surface initially. ;-)

The landscape HAD topology on it already, and the 'random rain' which carves out those rivers was always going to carve out the same rivers, because of the starting topology.

Really?

In my description, all that I pre-suppose is the property of awareness + the appearance of random fluctuation. Absolutely everything else follows from that, and leads to the stable world, one with physical laws and populated with conscious beings, we find ourselves in today. You are now suggesting we start with a pre-made topology, with everything rolling down it! So, how did this topology come to be? And how did the "snowball" come to be, and arrive at its initial location?

Basically, you are saying that space-time and the laws of physics are fundamental and have always existed, right That just seems a bit... unlikely! ;-)

If you like, I'll let you call the point where the first object appears "the Big Bang" or something like that. Would that make my description more appealing to you? :-)

And yes, I am suggesting a premade topology, because in YOUR example, the rivers wouldn't form without a nook and cranny to actually erode.

You are wrong. Which is why I included that little clustering animation. Since "random" doesn't mean "evenly distributed", paths will form on such a metaphorical "memory surface". No nooks and crannies required.

Rehashing again (because you don't seem to get this point I've been making the whole damn time... like talking to a wall), things 'are', they aren't 'not'. With that in mind, it isn't a leap to say all things that 'are', are, and that's it.

Oh, but it's a massive leap and it's a cheat. It's giving up, basically. We could have done that at any point in the past. Perhaps we could have just said: Hey, here's planet Earth, it just "is". But we didn't. You are suggesting we go: Hey, here are physical laws, they just "are"'. Why? You can push past that. Eventually you get to "is-ness" itself. Even that doesn't need to be accepted, you can go beyond it: "is" and "is not" are not fundamental. In fact you have to go beyond this, because that's the only way to account for consciousness, and any scheme which leaves that out is incomplete. I understand your point about not being able to access beyond the "cone" - that we cannot reach out beyond the rippling-out, beyond the unfurling edge of this "pattern" - but this turns out to not be important when all patterns have the same origin.

The way your own mind works is exactly the same way the whole universe works. And of course it is! How could it be otherwise? All talk of "software" is already "too late". It's a pretty unambitious base level to set ourselves when it comes to deeper explanations. Fun at a high level, sure, and very useful, but it's not "the nature of things". The universe is not made out of code, our of inferred laws, or out of mathematics. When we observe those things, we're really just observing the structure of our own minds...

...it's that those laws of physics and space-time CAN be known... ... the preloaded mechanics of reality boils down to things that 'can' be known...

...which is basically what you say here. When we talk about conceptual schemes (laws and so on) we're not really talking about the universe "out there" at all.

POST: How do I know you exist?

Get out of your head, go outside, experience reality, and you'll see there is so much more to life than just yourself.

• Can he get out of his head?
• Where is this "outside"?
• Maybe all of life is "just" himself.
• Not little him who worries about what to have for dinner, but the larger him.
• If all these things don't exist for his amusement, what do they exist for?

I feel like there's a whole bunch of people in this thread just fucking with this poor guy at this point. He came here asking a serious question that is obviously causing him a lot of anxiety and instead of replying with the simple answer, 'Chill out. We exist too.' You all decide to fuck with him by saying 'I dunno, I might exist, I might not, nothing is real' etc.

You have a point - I don't think he was taken particularly seriously. Unfortunately intersubjectivity is the trickiest topic when it comes to consciousness and experience. It's not easy to talk straight about.

The quick answer is that everything that you experience it real-at-what-it-is. You experience others as having presence and intelligence; that is sufficient evidence. Life is definitely simpler if you just accept that and go out and enjoy it.

Right? But, if we can't let it go, if someone really wants to explore it...

Just because you have access to your thoughts and not people's thoughts (note, not "other" people) doesn't mean you are on a different level of existence. When you really pay attention you find that, reassuringly, you are not really a "person" you are aware of a person - in the same way you are aware of "other people". And that is how experience can be centred around your perspective, while avoiding being self-centred (solipsistic). You can now relax and enjoy your life from the perspective of a background awareness rather than a tensed-up human.

Are you seriously saying WE and the entire universe exist for HIS sole amusement? If true, that has got to be the most egotistical statement I've ever heard.

If he really embraced that point of view then it would be the opposite of egotistical, and it wouldn't be about amusement. If you realised that the whole world was in fact "your extended body and mind", then you'd be very kind to it. To do otherwise, to play with aspects of it non-seriously, would be like taking fire to you own arms. And it wouldn't be an egotistical notion, because such a view would annihilate the ego - there would be no places for a localised, separate sense of self, right?

TL;DR: He can know we exist because he experiences us with a corresponding intelligence. However, the deeper answer involves revisiting what he thinks he is and we are in such a way as to place himself at the centre while changing the understanding of the himself to avoid solipsism.

Solipsism

That's only a problem if we're talking about a personal mind. If he realises that he doesn't exist (as a person) either, then solipsism isn't a hurdle.

POST: Why is it that the things happening inside our brain, are instead experienced as if they are happening outside of our body?

Things don't happen inside your brain. They happen within your awareness. Your perceptions, your thoughts, all happen within your awareness. The brain and body, meanwhile, is the 3rd-person image of the the activity of localised consciousness. The image is correlated, but not causal, with experience.

I'd be interested to see the research demonstrating this.

You can do the research yourself right now! Examine your own experience, back it up with a bit of reading on metaphysics, neuroscience and consciousness, there you go! ;-)

More seriously...

Donald Hoffman - "He received his BA from UCLA in Quantitative Psychology and his Ph.D. from MIT in Computational Psychology" - gave an accessible talk on his interface theory of perception that you might find interesting though - see here [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqDP34a-epI]. It's a bit more accessible than the published papers [http://www.cogsci.uci.edu/%7Eddhoff/ConsciousRealism2.pdf].

John Searle's opaque comments [https://blog.oup.com/2015/01/perception-experience-intentionality-philosophy/] are always interesting, but you might find the links in this post about Darkroom Vision [Darkroom Vision & Chef Hats & Dreams] worth your time.

Q: So two guys, basically. Only one of which has published any research papers. If I ask around about how credible the rest of their field considers them, what am I likely to hear? There is a saying: "Beware the man of one book". I think for the same reason it's wise to beware the man of one study, or who puts all of his confidence in a single figure because that guy agrees with him and seems sciencey/credible. The nature of truth is that it's convergent. Loads of people will arrive at it independently regardless of era or geographical distance. Has this happened yet for the idea that consciousness creates reality? Moreover, I have done some simple experiments myself as you suggested and I cannot seem to instantiate objects or alter objects in front of me by thinking about it. How do you account for this?

(Responding to the initial version of your comment.)

What, you're really going to go down the "lots of people" route on the nature of perception and consciousness? Is that how you make your decisions on other subjects?

I offered those links because they are thought-provoking and might encourage further research and reading - and experimentation. This is not an area where you can just go and read about "how it is". (In fact, I don't think there are many such areas.)

As you'll see, it's not clear what constitutes a "scientific experiment" in the field of consciousness, when there isn't actually a theory. We already have a similar problem with finding what matter "is", mind you.

Scientific Theory Side

Theorising on consciousness is the big open area. It's not just that we don't have a theory, it's that we have no idea what possible form a theory could take that will fit in with a materialist perspective - because we can't make the connection between 1st and 3rd person. Neuroscience is great stuff medically, but it keeps writing checks that it can't cash philosophically.

We often end up with "habits" (linking cosmological development to the big bang) or "promises" (it'll come out of brain research eventually, somehow) which just sit there as accepted ideas without having descriptive or predictive power. And even those that do are up for grabs - recent example [https://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html]. This is a classic area for this. Most people just won't touch the subject, because it's a no-win in terms of your career. Still less people really care; it's something that'd be better if it went away.

But those who are more established (or retired) do have a go. Christof Koch's aricle here [http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-consciousness-universal/] is worth a read although I think it is wrong; Donald Hoffman's ideas are interesting as mentioned before; this overview article [https://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jan/21/-sp-why-cant-worlds-greatest-minds-solve-mystery-consciousness] isn't great but some of the responses were interesting; Susan Greenfield has given some interesting talks but then she also comes out with other nonsense; Aeon magazine is a good resource for starting points, article examples here and here [Deleted]; Bernardo Kastrup's aggressive writing is definitely worth the thought-provokation. You might also find Erwin Schrodinger's lectures, What is Life? interesting - specfically the appendix.

But essentially - unless there's a real flip-around of some sort, we're not going to be getting a consensus anytime soon. Cristof Koch's imaginary dialogue in Scientific American sums it up. Because - in the end, all brain-as-causation theories hit the same problem - at what point does consciousness "magically" emerge from matter, if matter does not already have a consciousness aspect? (Note, I do not mean self- or reflective consciousness. Just the property of awareness.)

In fact, you can keep all the "goodies" of physics and so on if you flip it round and insert a conscious background at the ground level, within which matter/phenomena arise as structured patterns.

Experiential Reality Side

Meanwhile, you can learn a lot just by examining your actual moment-to-moment experience. You are conscious, so why not explore the nature of that consciousness from its own perspective?

Studying brain blood-flow patterns via MRI can't really offer much insight into that. Neither does reading about today's temporary theories, or thinking about experience. You actually have to do the investigation yourself to get the 1st-person insights. And only then will you know what is required of a 3rd-person theory. There's an abundance of material for this, but Rupert Spira's Presence and Greg Goode's The Direct Path are both well written and accessible. One has to ignore the "happy language" a little, but the actual approach is sound. Or you could try this little thought experiment [Outside: The Dreaming Game] (highlighted).

Other Reading

On the philosophical reading side, James M Corrigan's Introduction to Awareness is hard-going but very thorough. He tries for a ground-up description of the nature of experience. For a general round-up of the attempts to account for consciousness so far, covering both mainstream and less so, Susan Blackmore's Consciousness: An Introduction is an excellent read.

TL;DR: It ain't that simple, you're gonna have to do some work yourself, this is a "special topic" because it's not just about the sights, it's about the seeing. You need both the intellectual and the experiential aspect to make sense of it.

EDIT @ 20 mins: Re-ordered a little, added a couple of paragraphs for clarity, additional links.

(Responding to the extended version of your comment.)

Convergence & The Man of One Book

There is a saying: "Beware the man of one book".

A very wise saying! I'm totally stealing that. Similarly, beware the consensus view if you have not done the legwork yourself - or at least, be aware that you haven't. Take inspiration, I say, but keep it at arm's length.

The nature of truth is that it's convergent. Loads of people will arrive at it independently regardless of era or geographical distance. Has this happened yet for the idea that consciousness creates reality?

I don't think I ever said that "consciousness creates reality"! Reality might be made of consciousness, but that is a different thing. If "matter" was taken as the substrate layer, would we say that "matter creates reality"?

On convergence: Many people have proposed the consciousness-as-substrate view in the past. It's always been there, over the last couple of hundred years, amongst philosophers. It didn't really matter to general physics/biology until relatively recently, when the insurmountable issue of explaining consciousness via matter came to the ore. It doesn't really make much difference for "physics involving stuff", it's still more of a philosophical thing mostly. The early 20th-century physicists (back when it was more "natural philosophy") all had things to say about it, but that kind of got forgotten about. Schrodinger, Planck, Pauli, Bohr - they all had interesting views which differ from the "science=technology development" angle we ended up with by the late 20th, even if they didn't integrate them. Starting with work of the likes of David Bohm and Wholeness and the Implicate Order, his work with Basil Hiley, and culminating with an increasing number of articles by physicists on the topic in magazines like Scientific American, I think it's gradually become more prominent again. (Interestingly, it's the Bohmian approach to quantum mechanics which forms the basis for that recent article on the big bang I linked to before.)

Creation, Creator, Created

Meanwhile, we have to be very careful with the use of the word "creation" as a verb, a conscious act...

Moreover, I have done some simple experiments myself as you suggested and I cannot seem to instantiate objects or alter objects in front of me by thinking about it. How do you account for this?

...which is not to say it can't be done, eh. Those are definitely experiments everyone should try. What did you do, more specifically?

The idea that we can just sit in a chair and "think things into existence", as commonly understood, can quickly be disproven. Although we can think things into existence over-here (for that is what thoughts are) it doesn't necessarily mean we can think them into existence over-there. It is true that both thoughts and events "pattern" our minds as to the forms they will experience, though. In other words, we can be said to "create our experience", but the sense in which it is created means we'd be better to say something like "we can change the form of our experience". In the manner of, say, learning to see "trees" rather than brown patches topped off by green blobs. Or even "brown patches topped off by green blobs" rather than... nothingness. The extent to which this means "creation" rather than "formatting" depends on whether you believe there is a deeper underlying solid reality (without evidence) or that patterns of consciousness that have become stabilised is that solid reality. Even if you could establish new forms, that doesn't mean you can just fly about or make millions of dollars appear under your bed. The world might have over time established very stable habits, deeply ingrained patterns which act as an effective potential barrier to this - such as the tendency of objects to move towards one another ("gravity"), and persistence in general ("inertia"). However, within the parameters of accumulated structuring, there certainly are things we can do just by "asking" or what we might call thinking-over-there.

For instance, you can have your arm move. How do you do that?

Q: There's a lot of things I want to respond to in here, but I can't think of anything to say on the matter that won't irritate or upset you, and I don't want to do that. I do not foresee any possibility of constructive dialogue between us.

Respond!

You won't irritate or upset me, trust me. I am far less bound to a particular viewpoint than you might imagine - I'm just setting out my stall as a starting point. Be as "straightforward" as suits you, also.

...

Great, now we're up and running ;-)

This is astonishingly stupid. Only a retard would interpret this as evidence that consciousness creates reality.

I was careful to emphasise that I'm not saying that "consciousness creates reality". I'm suggesting that reality at the fundamental level is made from a material whose only property is consciousness. This isn't much different to saying it's made from "matter" - but it has the benefit that consciousness doesn't than have to magically "appear" at some point later. It's in-built. If you had followed any of the literature on consciousness studies over the last couple of decades even, you would be familiar with that approach as one of the possible solutions. If you are an appeal-to-authority kind of guy (which you seem to be) then you'll have to take the time to do some actual reading. If nothing else, read Wholeness and the Implicate Order or Paavo Pylkkanen's take on it.

Your arm moves when you want it to because a direct electrical connection exists between your brain and that limb, which conveys the signal to move.

Really? Is that what you do when you get your arm to move? Right there is missing the point and the problem. Until we can connect the experience you actually have (I bet you've never experienced "direct electrical connections in your brain" ever) and the external observations, then there is a gap that needs to be bridge. These are some of the issues at the core of the consciousness problem. You seem to not understand there is even something to explain!

"What the @#$% Do We Know" is a textbook example of this, the scientists they interviewed were not told what the movie was really about.

Yeah, that was a terrible film... But the fact you even bring that up reveals something. I mean, nobody who actually is interested in these topics takes that seriously, right? Or even has a debate about it? It's like taking The Matrix as a documentary. So - I gave you a bundle of links to relevant articles by respected figures (is selected relevance "cherry picking"?) that offer the background you lack and are required to understand the problem and the potential solution, and you respond with a reference to that movie? I've referred you to no "new-age woo", as you put it. Or is it that you just automatically equate "consciousness" to a "woo topic" because it doesn't fit neatly into a conceptual framework?

Your problem is that you don't know what you don't know. You are arguing about something you have spent zero time studying. As Wolfgang Pauli would say: You're not even wrong. Finally, you seem so very... emotional about all this. Why is that? It's fine if this is an uncomfortable topic for you; simply put it aside in that case. But don't fool yourself that there's no issue, that everything's solved, that we've got this sussed at the moment, etc. Science just isn't like that, it doesn't find Truth and never aims to. In ten years time, we might well look upon the idea of the Big Bang as a quaint mistake borne from an out-dated perspective [https://phys.org/news/2015-02-big-quantum-equation-universe.html].

POST: Your subconscious is smarter than you might think

I suggest that thoughts are their own things, and that problems solve themselves. Problems, as described in thought, are created with the intention of being solves, and so their natural tendency is to do so. Create them (formulate the problem), leave them alone, and that thought framework will come back to you in the form of the answer. It seems mystifying to us because we assume that "we" actually do things. It's actually probably more accurate to say that we set targets, and the rest of it happens to use as experiences, as the world walks the path towards those targets. It's only the tendency we have to not entirely let go to this process which results in a sense of opposition and tension - or effort - and the feeling that we do and try instead of have an experience. Meanwhile - the so-called subconscious isn't really outside consciousness, it's just not expanded as a sensory experience. It's a felt-sense that's always there. Just because it's not explicitly being encountered as "objects and sense modalities" doesn't it isn't there at all, enfolded into the background space.

Q: This is something that I have really had an interesting time dealing with, the concept that most of my decisions and actions are likely comprised of subconscious activity. I struggled with that alot ofter my first psychedelic experience, It was eye opening, almost like what part of reality is "real" when I'm not even consciously acting in it. How much do my eyes see in comparison to how much I truly "see." Its scary to think about. especially if you have poor subconscious patterns or tendencies.

One of my favourite topics of the moment. Perception isn't something you do, it "appears to you". To what extent do your actions just "appear to you" as well?

...

Thanks for the response.

Requesting valid citations is not an appeal to authority. Somebody's book does not equal peer reviewed research.

This really is a false point. All of those authors have academic papers about their work; their books are based on it. However, you should be well-informed enough to judge what you read on its own merits. It's not beyond anyone to understand the issues here; it does not require advanced mathematics, for instance.

But, here is a good point - One of the criticisms that has been levied at theories relating to consciousness (and indeed alternate interpretations of quantum theory, the Bohmian approach included) is that it doesn't change the results, or predict different results - it changes the description of the results. For instance, is there an experiment we could do to prove that things are made from "matter"? No, because we measure the properties of something - not what something is, or the nature of our experience of it. We just don't care about this in a physical theory. But that's exactly the gap we need to tackle in this case.

The idea that it is something separate and extricable from the brain rather than generated by it absolutely is woo.

Nobody is suggesting that, least of all me. The challenge is to have consciousness be associated with the brain without having to invoke some magical "emergence". In fact, we want consciousness to be "baked in" to reality before we even get to "brains". This is why Koch, Hoffman et al. have ended up changing tac to approach it from the other end, as it were.

And what you call studying amounts to fruitcakes reading books by fruitcakes.

Really. So, you're saying that reading the work of physicists and philosophers and other thinkers, and using them as the basis of your own thinking, constitutes "fruitcakes & fruitcakes"?

It seems to me that you are a bit of a cherry-picker yourself - the ideas you like are legitimate, those you don't, aren't.

What troubles me is that this is also what creationists say with respect to evolution. (That things aren't finalised.)

Creationists aren't pointing out that some things aren't explained, they just don't like the current explanation. The problem with consciousness is that it isn't explained with our current approach. I like that Asimov essay too, but I don't see what it adds here. I can't help but think you are reading into what I say, assuming that I am taking a position that you happen to be particularly against. What I'm saying isn't particularly controversial as a possible approach:

• Consciousness - as experienced personally and as implied by observations externally - isn't currently accounted for in our description of the world.
• Until we can bridge the gap between my 1st-person experience of being and doing, with the 3rd-person observation of my body and actions, then our description of reality, biology and consciousness is not complete.
• The faith that consciousness is "emergent" at some point in brains seems unfounded and optimistic. Where is this magical moment? At what level of complexity? Is consciousness then a "thing" that is "made", rather than a property? If it is a property, why isn't it there all along?
• When I talk of "consciousness" I am not talking about self-conscious thinking. That would depend on the complexity of a structure. I am talking about the simple property of awareness, introducing it at ground level.
• This does not lead to "consciousness creates reality" in a new-age style. It does however mean that you can move your arm (by which I mean, your whole body can move itself as a single pattern, starting with brain activity). At the moment, we cannot explain how it is possible to move your arm - we can only describe the sequence of observations that constitute arm movement.

What are the problems here?

...

Incidentally if I seem unreasonably harsh...

That's fine. It makes conversation a bit more efficient! ;-)

Wait... pause.

What exactly are we disagreeing about here? You seem to be assuming that I am suggesting that "science is not the way" and, like some sort of creationist, that some magic is responsible for our conscious experience and our world in general. In fact, I hold the opposite: That (neuro)science at the moment involves a sprinkling of magic dust at the last moment to make us conscious.

Problems??

I think neuroscience is, at the moment, super-basic and is talking up its book in the same way that genetics did back in the day (remember the certainty with which it was thought it was a "blueprint" with a gene for each property?) - most fMRI work seems to be a hack-job fishing expedition with "optimistic" statistics and an unsubtle "brain lighting up = this". This is somewhat of a funding-driven situation (I've been in similar situations in another scientific field.)

However, it will get better. I do believe the body and brain is the image of the person and their experience - "from the outside", as it were. Not in a particularly special way, in a similar sense I can tell a person's personality from their macroscopic behaviour. It's just a more detailed, granular view. So that's not the problem. Body-brain events correlate to an inner of events, quite so. To be clearer: Body-brain events correspond to the CONTENT of my experience

The problem is, how do I link my personal "inner" experience of content to that "outer" observation? How is it that I aware of the content? How am I able to manipulate that content (e.g. create thoughts and move my body)?

Those are the unanswered questions. No matter how detailed our description of the brain, we'll still need to tackle this, the "hard problem". Agreed?

[QUOTE]

Hard problem of consciousness
In the philosophy of mind, the "hard problem" of consciousness is to explain why and how humans (and other organisms) have qualia, phenomenal consciousness, or subjective experience. It is contrasted with the "easy problems" of explaining why and how physical systems give a human being the ability to discriminate, to integrate information, and to perform behavioural functions such as watching, listening, speaking (including generating an utterance that appears to refer to personal behaviour or belief), and so forth. The easy problems are amenable to functional explanation—that is, explanations that are mechanistic or behavioural—since each physical system can be explained purely by reference to the "structure and dynamics" that underpin the phenomenon.

[END OF QUOTE]

Solutions??

And the suggested solution (this is where you get to slag me off and say it's rubbish, but please say why that is the case):

If we incorporate "awareness" as a fundamental property of things from the start, then we just don't have the problem. Matter would not be reflectively aware but it would have "self-consciousness". Then there are no longer implicitly two separate things (consciousness and the body) with one causing the other or influencing the other. They become the same thing. Complex structures such as the brain-body will inherently experience themselves. I am my body-brain - or at least a subset of it - and I move or think simply by moving myself, as myself. (Any idea about myself being a little controller somewhere is just a thought I have from time to time. Really "I" am the whole thing.)

To change my inner experience of myself is identical to acting and thinking. We've joined together the "inner theatre" and other "outer person"!

So that takes care of that. But we also get some stuff for free: An outcome of this is we get to move away from a strictly "parts" model of the universe. With a single background "property" that is everywhere, we can have nonlocal effects explained more easily. Our view becomes an integrated, continuous one.

IIT & CR/IT & AI

It would actually be better if there was a word that wasn't "consciousness" with all the baggage it brings with it. Which is where ideas like "integrated information" (Tononi) and the "interface model/conscious realism" (Hoffman) and "active information (Bohm) come in, although they are still build on awareness-as-inherent really. I pick on those authors because they are the most complete formulations that seem hopeful at formally integrating the different parts, even though I don't fully agree with them. I am not cherry-picking - honest! ;-)

(The Tononi papers on IIT are a bit of a slog although it's worth reading the update. Scott Aaronson's blog entry on it is good though. Less sophisticated, this overview, but it adds: "Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe. Wherever there is integrated information, there is experience.")

...

Just passing this thread again: A recent conversation reminded me that Henry Stapp - worked with Pauli and Heisenberg - is good on this. His book Mindful Universe is worthwhile, but actually the introductory chapters of Mind, Matter and Quantum Mechanics (I recently rediscovered, see here [http://www.martinshaven.com/Resources/StappMMQ.pdf]) pretty much covers it all, although a bit dense.

Stapp's interpretation of Quantum Theory is that there are many knowers. Each knower's act of knowledge (each individual increment of knowledge) results in a new state of the universe. One person's increment of knowledge changes the state of the entire universe, and, of course, it changes it for everybody else. Quantum Theory is not about the behavior of matter, but about our knowledge of such behavior.

Basically, it's a mental universe.

Anyway, that's that. Cheers!

POST: Why do humans need a sense of identity?

If we lose our identities, we lose what our humanity.

If you are something, how is it possible to lose it? I can see how we might lose our misconceptions, what we think we are - but how can you lose your true identity?

Humans are, by nature, empathetic beings.

So (I then think) if we stop interfering with ourselves, our identity, then we might be better able to relax into this more fundamental nature, and greater empathy should result?

Have you ever experienced death? Either in a medical sense, or psychedelic "ego death"?

Only in the letting-go-of-person way. Hence the ideas about a background what-you-are.

POST: What do you guys think about Eckhart Tolle?

Maybe our idea of what "walking the walk" entails is misguided. Non-duality isn't about behaviour, it's about a simple fact:

At the fundamental level, there is no separation or division, there is just the nonmaterial material whose only property is being-aware. Everything else exists only as patterns in that awareness.

As a result of this understanding, we might then conclude there are appropriate behaviours - because "we are all one" - but those are extra ideas on top. The fundamental reality itself doesn't care what patterns appear within it.

Realising the non-dual nature might result in feeling connected with all of reality and humanity "as you", but your experience is still patterned as a human experience. Just as materialists don't necessarily go about actually acting as if they were inert matter with no empathy, non-dualists don't necessarily go about being messiah-like. They are not an example to us all, "they" are just another temporary pattern in awareness.

This interpretation seems to abandon the need for any ethics.

From the fundamental viewpoint, there is no such thing. But then, from the fundamental viewpoint, there isn't anything. There is the property of connectedness of all people at the fundamental level, so we would expect an increased natural compassion for others in someone with more "insight". But with this would come a recognition that there are divisions at the human level, and that they are resolved by constant rebalancing. If everyone identified completely with the whole (the 'ethics of the continuum'), there would be no distinctions, and therefore no wars (nothing and nobody to fight) and so on. Also in effect, no people! But for as long as there are distinctions, then there is division and opposition...

And the environment - together with our human need for food and water - will create distinction and therefore opposition, even if we do not. Ethics, then, are the human "customs, habits" associated with a particular distinction (group), a particular worldview, geared towards the persistence of that distinction (group).

With this logic, it seems as if Hitler could have the same presence of mind as Tolle. Interesting indeed.

Hitler is just as much a part of "the one" as Tolle, and neither is evil from their own perspective. In fact, one extreme can only be discerned relative to the other; they are part of the ongoing rebalancing process, a destabilised object oscillation to a rest position. I would hope Tolle feels a more general compassion than Hitler did though, that his worldview encompasses more people. However, if Tolle found himself in a cage fight, would he resort to violence?

Speaking of Tolle in a cage fight, that reminds me of the old Ghandi anecdote, which was something like: Asshole with Sword: I could kill you without blinking an eye! Ghandi: You could kill me without me blinking an eye.

Love the Ghandi quote! The more interesting cage fight would be Tolle vs Ghandi!

I think this brings up the question of "attachment" . . . only the relinquishing of attachment gets you to the real shit.

Well, this is true. You release your hold on narrowed attention, let it open out and deepen to encompass everything. You become the entire world, universe, the real deal... at which point patterns fade, you become only the continuum, and you will think it is absolutely perfect as it is. What you've learned is that to have an experience, requires a division. If you have a division, you have opposition. If you have opposition, you have conflict. The recognition of this means you no longer feel you have to fight the conflict, not that it disappears. It becomes sort of "transparent" and you can see through it. You realise that it's okay to go swimming even if the water has ripples in it, because otherwise there would be no water in which to swim. This is where "acceptance" comes in, I guess.

I wonder if it's possible to be both attached and detached at the same time? I know some meditative dudes claim to maintain "split consciousness," where they are simultaneously, say, carrying on a conversation with you and repeating a mantra in order to ground themselves.

Well, I'm not a fan of that "mantra" stuff, but I certainly think you can have multiple patterns arising in your awareness at once that don't necessarily form a continuous space. You do it all the time, in fact, by looking around you while a thought appears. The thought seems somehow to be parallel-simulataneous - occurring at the same time but no in the same "perceptual space". Normally we flip perspectives - you can do it right now: Just decide to "become" the space in the room, including the volume of space your body occupies. Now "become" your body again. And so on. From there, you can experience everything as just being "made from the background awareness". How does this then relate to our enlightened folk and their action in the world? Well, I'm not quite sure about this. If you ponder it, there is the fundamental situation (the nonmaterial material) and there is the arbitrary patterns within it. Anything at all that is not the fundamental is pattern-based, and therefore specific to the forms/habits underlying our experience. So-called "wisdom" is then relative. It's just a case of which granularity, which level of subtly, you are speaking from in terms of the patterning.

And yeah, if you identify completely with the whole, then I agree you don't exist at all.

Right. The most subtle patterns will be simple properties, then concepts, such as "relative division" and "spatial extent" and then "perimeter". These will be felt-known. Much later, there might be concepts of "image" and "sound" and "texture". We haven't even got to "object" yet...

It is all very well to say that the true reality is "love" - by which people mean the unbounded openness of being-aware - but while you are a human you have certain baseline structures in your experience that dissolving will mean, if not death, then a ceasing of this-world in perception. Recognition is good, but its primary result is probably the reduction of fear? And maybe increased possibilities...

Extra topic: Does "acceptance" mean literally accepting things as they are, even if this knowledge implies a new-found flexibility to reality which suggests we could affect it in direct ways?

...

Q: I tried reading his book "A New Earth". It started out amazing, so many of the things he was describing resonated with me. But then he got to the chapter about materialism, and the whole thing fell apart.
He lost all credibility at that point, because on one hand he's talking about spirituality and consciousness and things that any human could relate to. Next he's talking about something extremely culture-centric like materialism, which applies a lot to America but not so much to some other countries (I was reading it while being in a third world asian country).
It felt like he knew exactly the audience he was trying to sell the book to (namely western countries, especially the USA), so he put some chapters to appeal to that demographics specifically. It felt fundamentally dishonest, and turned me off the rest of the book, and him as a person.

What does he say about materialism what turned you off? Bringing up the subject itself isn't a problem. I would assume that to bring anyone to a new understanding you have to connect with their current worldview, and then form a bridge. Of course, if your reading requirement is that "things resonate with you" then that could be quite restrictive...

POST: I spend a lot of time reading through my own profiles, trying to figure out who I am. In reality, I should be creating who I want to be right now.

There's definitely a difference between examining the world as it is, trying to read the signs and trails to find out what's going on and what can be done, and asserting the changes you want to create a world. One assumes the world is remade and structured and you must understand the maze to make your way through it; the other says that the world is responsive and the maze adjusts to provide you with a path if you take "the bold step".

POST: Demystifying enlightenment

Try stop thinking of yourself as a human but, instead, think of yourself as a vantage point.

That's good. I think of it as a "perspective" but the actual experience is more like being an open space, with "perspective-based content" appearing within it. Like doing the "turn off your senses" exercise.

Rather simply go an sit somewhere and do nothing...

Yes, I've found this best. Or just lie down on the ground, head supported, and give up completely to gravity/God/experience or whatever. At most, you can "decide" to switch to the background perspective before you do so. Then you don't even "let go", you just no longer hold-on. Really, what you are doing is not-interfering - specifically, not-interfering with your attention, which will then release, open out, and dissolve by itself.

POST: Any older(maybe even wiser) Psychonauts here?

A great point. My favourite! Two types of truth:

• Conceptual/Pattern Truth - Something feels true because the conceptual framework it is a part of is self-supporting. This is the feeling of 'coherence and elegance'. However, it can be a castle in the sky; it need have no relationship whatsoever to other parts of reality to generate that feeling. These tend to be thoughts-about other experiences or patterns-about. A strategy developed on a nice map doesn't necessarily translate to a result in the field. However, it might be art.
• Direct Truth - The hardness of a table, the sense of being-aware, direct visual observation of an action and a result. Truths that are simply experiences, rather than thoughts-about experiences.

Obviously, the two are tangled somewhat, but it pays to be wary of enthusing about 'elegance' other than for its own sake.

POST: Not feeling the love

Do you feel "fighty against the world" generally? Lots of people do. Residual tension from past events, conflicting thoughts and concepts, etc. They will release eventually; you can do a daily "letting go" exercise to let them go a bit more efficiently (or full-blown meditation). Importantly though, don't go seeking for how you "should" feel. Feel whatever you do, then do what needs done (see David K Reynolds' Constructive Living for the chat on that). Remember, they are not "your" thoughts; they are just... thoughts.

POST: Thoughts and plans of "suicide".

Well, haven't you got it sussed eh? Or... not. Probably missing the point, more like. Who said the purpose was 'happiness' and wilful control of your state? How come you think that the world and society is imperfect? If you think this is the case, your work is not done, despite all your "selflessness and compassion". You can't have it both ways. There is no escape. And you're not done yet. You'll be back here in no time, I think. ;-)

Q: If I do end up coming back, I'd actually like to come back as a forest :) A larger, higher, older form of consciousness. And yes forests do have a consciousness if you really think about it. Each tree communicates with one another through the release of chemicals and the help of fungi in the roots. Just like how each neuron in our brain communicates via neurotransmitters. The collective action of each organism firing off creates a larger collective consciousness.

Right - I love that image of the forest, as a "slow being". Just me and the Ents, hangin' out for the ages, having (very) long conversations.

Q: I'd actually be just as content coming back :) if it's in a different body with a different life, I'd still be content with that and am willing to accept it as a new learning experience! I'd also be just as content staying in the afterlife, where ever it may be. I actually took this online test "How old is your soul" and it said mines was millions of years old. And I know these tests can't truly measure such things, but I feel it to be very true. I feel it with all my heart. And I do believe with all my heart that the purpose is happiness and knowledge. We continue to reincarnate into this world so that our soul will build up it's library of experiences and learn all the lessons there are to learn. I feel like I've learned all I need to learn from this reality throughout all of my lifetimes and am ready to leave for good. When I spoke of willful control of my emotions. It's sorta like how regular folks will let their environment and people around them affect their emotions. They are happy when they play video games, they are sad when someone breaks up with them. Their emotions are influenced by the outside factors. For me, my emotions come from the soul. I can be wronged by others and still feel happy because the happiness comes from within, from the soul, as opposed to from the environment. "How come you think that the world and society is imperfect? If you think this is the case, your work is not done, despite all your "selflessness and compassion". You can't have it both ways."
Well, for one, I don't need to have it both ways, nor am I desiring to have it any which way. I don't know where you got that idea from to be honest. Why I think society is imperfect I've already explained within my initial post. Most of society is blinded and confused by the materialistic nature of our reality. They fill themselves with unnecessary worries from day to day when they don't need to. They let events and things in their environment affect them, stressing themselves out. They blindly follow religion and government without even giving it a second thought. Without ever questioning "why". I explained this to one of my "unawoken" friends and he told me "Well there are laws and if you break the laws, there are gonna be consequences." See, his mind is still stuck in that limited paradigm, thinking that he MUST do what society and government tells him to do, how to live, how to act, what drugs are legal/illegal, what he should and shouldn't do, etc. He's still stuck in the thinking that government IS LAW and religion IS LAW and you MUST follow them if you want to be a good person and be successful. He still thinks that success in life means finishing college, getting a well paying job, and owning a big house and a fancy car. He thinks that materialistic things will bring happiness. And he's partially right, materialistic things DO bring happiness, but it isn't true happiness. True happiness is everlasting no matter what. Materialistic happiness disappears once you take away the things that make you happy.

Yeah, I'm not sure about the 'old soul' thing... but: You're a bit clearer in this response. It's true that happiness can't come from external things, except as a brief clearing of preoccupation which allows the natural stillness to be experienced. Nothing wrong with "external fun", of course - it's just that it should be enjoyed rather than relied upon. People blindly follow because they don't realise their own power, and that we can assert our worldview rather than go looking for hints and the guide of authority. Of course, this assertion only makes sense once you've understood what you 'are'. In other words, people asking "why?" often isn't sufficient - the answers they get result in the same mistakes. I do think more people are more aware than ever before though. Not that it's any of our concern one way or the other - which is why I brought it up that you mentioned this. It's no reason to leave, in and of itself - because it basically is yourself. Anyway... True, everlasting happiness from within - and a nice car. Now, that's living and being. ;-)

POST: You wanna know the way out?

[POST]

[END OF POST]

A1: If taken seriously, this comic is idiotic. It says accept your prison, you're a rat in a maze, so just be a rat and don't try to look for an out. That's defeatism. Give up trying, give up looking. On the other hand, this comic could be very clever because after all it paints the beings who indulge in defeatism as rats, so it may be a funny and clever dig at those who preach acceptance when something more radical would have been more appropriate. If the comic is meant to be sarcastic, it's a great one.

*A2: I love this because it represents to me the major fallacies of the new-agey crowd:

1. thinking that people want to know the way out when they are already sedated with food and entertainment
2. thinking that "Acceptance" is the 'way out' - if the TV mouse simply 'accepted' his position, he would still be stuck in the maze... Acceptance is not the full solution and IMO really only helps if you are awake enough to then realize that you can change the current reality <3*

Right. Acceptance lets you detach from the current patterns of experience. Only by detaching from them can you transform them. Acceptance allows intention to unfold - but rabid acceptance, where you hold onto the experience you are accepting, misses the point. That's... fatalism.

POST: The mind is so complicated

Thoughts...

Any pattern you discover is just... another pattern you've discovered. The more you look, the more you create-discover. Whenever you adopt a particular outlook or conceptual framework, your world will appear to fall in line with it to a greater or lesser extent: "mind-formatting by metaphor". The form of the world as experienced = the form of your mind. You experience yourself. Trying to get to 'the bottom of it' is just creating more ripples in the pool of water, obscuring what is underneath. To truly understand something is to know it directly. If you want to know the texture of something, you don't think about it - you touch it, quietly. You have to let such knowledge come to you, arise within you.

POST: Why do people want to lucid dream? This seems just like an ego trip

A1: Because it's cool and stuff.

A2: Not everything is about ego vs no ego.

A3: What is ego?

Lucid dreaming means first and foremost that you are aware that you are dreaming while dreaming - the direct control aspect is optional. To argue against such awareness would be to argue against, say, meditation. What you are saying is really an argument for ignorance! ;-)

The dream is "all you" anyway, whether you direct it or not. If you choose to consciously change the dream, where do you think your ideas for changes come from? What is the source of those ideas? How does that differ from the source of the spontaneous dream content?

POST: Do you think we have free will?

Yes. And you are conscious(ness). However, neither can be described or accounted for or proved conceptually, because the logic/description itself occurs within experience, as a result of the thing you are trying to reason towards.

It's a "trying to see your own eyes" type of situation.

POST: Everything you could ever possibly imagine already exists in an implicate form. When you imagine it, you're basically finding a vision of a possible future - whether you want to pursue and manifest that vision is entirely your choice.

[POST]

You can then proceed to carve out a path through space-time and you may or may not reach that point in the sea of possibilities that is the universe.
I love this place.
To clarify:
Of course there's the obvious physically impossible visions, but you might create those visions through art or entertainment. And perhaps if we create VR so realistic we can't even tell anymore - that would mean infinite possibilities on top of the physical world. Go create your dreams in whatever way you see fit! Even if you don't reach exactly what you envisioned, that's okay, you're gonna have one hell of a ride anyway.
Side-thought: this is why sci-fi is such an interesting phenomenon, people imagine a concept which seems pretty far out, which in turn inspires people/scientists, which actually steers culture and progress towards those dreams, or inspires them. Early examples: 'I imagine what it would be like to be a bird' -> boom. some dudes make a goddamn airplane. And less than 70 years later we're on the moon. After thousands of years of people being stuck on the earth. That's nuts.
It's also interesting to note the similarities between biological evolution and our intelligence, if you consider memetic selection/mutation etc. So our mind is like this self-organizing expression of the universe at a higher level of consciousness, with a higher class of speed. I totally agree with McKenna's ideas on how the biosphere of the planet is like a 'slow-moving consciousness' - it has a sort of rudimentary intelligence of balancing systems out. And then you have people working towards digital intelligence, something which could lead towards the 'next level' of self-organization. We might live to see some seriously incredible stuff happen.
Okay and let's go even further - once you know everything that is possible to know (...this will take a while) and you have an intelligence whose 'level' approaches infinity - you can analyze every possible permutation of the universe and try to find 'the most basic ingredient of reality'. And then you can make your own universe! Or perhaps even somehow .... reverse engineer ours? But I guess there's insufficient data for a meaningful discussion about that for now.
Seems like I'm in a bit of a rambling mood.

[END OF POST]

How is the implicit made explicit?

Q1: That's asking how the universe came to be and how/why it unfolds. I don't know if we'll ever find a meaningful answer to that.
Think of the following analogy: a chessboard has 8x8 squares and, depending on the interaction of the pieces, reaches a different configuration every time. However, within the concept of the game of chess & its rules lies the seed for every possible permutation that could come forth out of it. This is the implicit order, it is implied through the ingredients of the system. The actual unfolding of a game, the route it carves out through its 'search-space', is the explicit order.
If the chess analogy doesn't really resonate, you can imagine the same analogy for the creation of images or pictures - read this [https://web.archive.org/web/20121024095654/http://barbariangroup.com/posts/1694-running_out_of_images]
Now, you have humans playing chessgames and making pictures, but for reality the driving force could simply be the universe, discovering and learning itself. So my only possible answer to your question is: the implicit is made explicit because the universe is the result of energy/raw consciousness trying to understand itself.

I like the chess analogy and "search space". What I wondered about the implicit in my pondering moments was: We say that it exists, but does it exist in terms of actually being there, enfolded, or is it rather that there are a number of "possible states" within the rules, that can therefore be made explicit. Really, the latter, as a configuration space. Not that we could tell the difference. But then, what does it mean to be "explicit" anyway - just experienced in the senses? An implicit option, attended to.

The universe has been busy, it seems!

Q1: I guess the most intuitive way of putting this is that the explicit can be equated to our subjective experience, our feeling of 'now', of what the implicit order has unfolded through time.

Yes. "Unfolded" into subjective experience. With the facts-of-the-world dissolved, timelessly and spacelessly, into the background, always present and available to be focused upon ("made explicit").

Which loops round to our beginning: what is the selection mechanism by which infinity is filtered down to a particular moment vs another? I guess, via the accumulated superposition of all patterns ("the rules" and archetypes) which definite possibilities, then by our intention.

Q1: My mind is not entirely clear on that process yet. There's the whole 'deterministic/mechanistic' thing, but on the other hand there's consciousness acting as a driving force. They're both true, in a sense, it just seems to be 'intention' being modulated at a different level of complexity. That's why I said I think biological evolution and our thinking process is essentially the same thing.

I think that paths can be deterministic overall, what matters is that you have choice at the level your are at, of the deterministic paths "below" you. Which pretty much ties in with what you just said.

I think of it as "filtering patterns", with some patterns (time) more established than others (belief, expectation, knowledge) and some much more flexible (intention). When we make a decision to have an experience, we are adjusting the "intention" pattern to allow the desired experience to unfold - whether that be "I want to experience my arm raising", or something more complex, maybe not directly associated with your action.

Q1: Interesting way of formulating it! I was just pondering how string theory would suggest that the explicit universe is essentially a heavily modulated signal. Everything is just vibrations. And it happens at different scales, over different levels of complexity. So it's funny how you mention filtering, since that's what signal processing is all about :) So the universe is a self-filtering signal and an infinitely recursive fractal .... this is some straight up M.C. Escher stuff

Right, good comparison... and the "self" and the signal is you.

POST: What is non-duality/headlessness?

Headlessness is Douglas Harding's approach to realising the actual nature of your experience - see here. I recommend Rupert Spira for exploring non-duality.

From what I understood, we don't experience non-duality because we see life in 1st person. If we try to imagine experiencing life in the 3rd person, we see that there is not really an observer.

No, it's the other way around really.

Our direct 1st person experience is non-dual - it consists only of consciousness. That is the insight. The problems we encounter in understanding experience are precisely due to our tendency to imagine it in the 3rd person. Basically, we tend to think-about our experience rather than directly-explore it.

You might like the Imagination Room metaphor as a way of helping you play with this.

The short version:

• Your actual experience is of being a "big open aware space" in which sensations, thoughts, and perceptions appear and disappear. When we think about our experience, we tend to imagine on top of this, that we are a brain and a body and a person. But actually we don't experience those things.
• You can realise this by directing your attention at "where you are looking out from". Simply point your finger at your face, and follow the direction it is pointing in. What is there? A big open space! There is no "you" there. Your body is empty! Then you notice that this "space" extends infinitely in all directions - you cannot feel a boundary in it anywhere.

TL;DR: It's all about realising that you experience yourself as unbounded consciousness with no "outside", and all the world appears "within" that, as you.

POST: There Is Growing Evidence that Our Universe Is a Giant Hologram - Vice

Saying "it is a hologram" is so unhelpful.

If it would be phrased: the universe seems to have properties which are similar to that of a hologram - specifically, that the sum of information seems to be present and accessible locally, as well as being experienced in spatially-extedned extended form. Then people might be more interested.

Although it's not very snappy, I'll admit.

POST: How do you define ego?

*Q1: I think Aldous Huxley's interpretation of it is the best.
=="Each person is at each moment capable of remembering all that has ever happened to him and of perceiving everything that is happening everywhere in the universe. The function of the brain and nervous system is to protect us from being overwhelmed and confused by this mass of largely useless and irrelevant knowledge, by shutting out most of what we should otherwise perceive or remember at any moment, and leaving only that which is likely to be practically useful. According to such a theory, each one of us is potentially Mind at Large. But in so far as we are animals, our business is at all costs to survive. To make biological survival possible, Mind at Large had to be funneled through the reducing valve of the brain and nervous system What comes out the other end is a measly trickle of the kind of consciousness which will help us to stay alive on the surface of this particular planet."

• from The Doors of Perception.==*

It's a good quote, but it reminds me of the problem I had with it at the time I read it:

If we are "Mind At Large", then in what sense are we funnelled through nervous systems and brains? Maybe we could say we "take on the experience of being" brains, take on that shape, but that's it. In other words, we are not people using brains as a filtering mechanism against Mind - we are Mind imagining ourselves to be people, with the brain a representation of our state.

Magick is then an approach by which we re-imagine our person-world. All states and experiences are always available for this process. It's a shifting of attention, therefore, rather than a transformation?

POST: Have any of you traveled to parallel universe? How? Got any tips for me?

Why are you interested?

You can't undo a reformatting. Maybe clean up first [Overwriting Yourself ].

Q1: [http://www.reddit.com/r/dimensionaljumping]
bunch of hokey if you ask me

Aw, you're no fun... ever tried it?

Q1: It seems obvious to me that the thoughts I think and the actions I execute are all the traveling to parallel universes that I need. I can see how dimensional jumping would work: you are looking into a mirror and with utmost focus you will something. Of course this changes your life! You are willing something sincerely! But to think you need to look into a mirror and that you are actually "dimension jumping" or that you don't need an actual change in your life style is silly. But hey what do I know.

To an extent you're right.

The mirror technique is a bit of a traditional hangover from scrying and whatever - a way to loosen your focus, detach, and reformat your mind (hence your experience). And "dimensions" are metaphorical in this context. Just a way to conceptualise a sudden shift. In fact, dimensions are conceptual anyway: if you examine your actual experience, you don't find any dimensions. However, it provides a way of formulating intention.

The interesting bit is that, if you play with it, it's a bit more than goal-setting and pattern-matching. The very flexible "active metaphors" being used do allow for pretty sudden shifts - extreme synchronicity, definitely, glitch-like experiences, certainly.

Like all these things, you need to experiment a little personally to really understand (or dismiss) it. There is an effect - the mechanism behind the effect, if there is a mechanism, is something to ponder though.

POST: Besides drugs and meditation, what are good ways to learn more about yourself?

A1: Try to get out of your head. The purpose of "self-exploration" isn't just to sit and navel-gaze. It does you no good to have "found yourself" if you just sit and wallow in the metaphysics of your selfhood all day. Go do something. Pursue a passion. Live.
This is a lesson I've learned first-hand after half a year of derealization following tripping and serious "self-exploration".
My suggestion? Once a week, go out, leave your phone at home, and spend the whole day exploring. Go on adventures. That plot of woods down the road? That neighborhood you don't know too well? That nature preserve a few towns away? Go check it out. Bring some friends if you want. Get lost in your own backyard.
Forget about spirituality and metaphysics and philosophy. They're empty by themselves and all too often become escapism from the fact that we're afraid to actually go do something. Put intellectual/spiritual/mental issues on the backburner for a bit and embrace that animal side of you that wants to get up and do something for it's own sake. It's bursting with vitality if you let it come out.
Forgetting about your "spiritual self" and esoteric mumbo jumbo and just being human is spirituality in itself, and at this point is more likely to put you in touch with who you really are than dropping acid or meditating or thinking about philosophy all day.
I'm not trying to put down all that stuff, as it's great. But you can go to extremes in both direction, and extremes are never healthy. I say that from experience.
Good luck.
Peace :)

Fine words.

POST: I have 43,000 youtube subscribers. I just made a controversial video on shrooms. Curious your thoughts on the video?

Video content seems mostly fair enough. The number of subscribers you have and the "controversy" shouldn't really matter, if you are sincere about what you are saying. So don't worry about that. (Unless for you it's about always getting the nice feedback, for a bit of a boost, which is fine too but a whole other thing, with its own potential problems.)

On the "controversy" -

Probably your framing of it in terms of "religious" and "atheist" stirred things up a bit, because those terms mean different things to different people, just like "God" does. Like it or not, and no matter how you caveat it, the word "God" generally means an entity god to most people, which is why something like "pure awareness" often gets used to describe that "behind the scenes unity" instead. I doubt the the "athiests" subscribed to your videos are against the idea of a "larger field" of some sort, and have possibly already found their own ways of reaching that conclusion, mushroom-free. So maybe they found your recommendation condescending. Hence dislikes.

Q1: Great comment, I really appreciate your thoughts TGeorge! :)
I actually pride myself a bit on the fact that sometimes I make videos that gets lots of dislikes. I do my best to be my true self on youtube, rather than trying to make videos that get views / likes.
So when I make a video that gets lots of dislikes, I think it's a very healthy thing.
Completely agreed with your thoughts there and I think your perfectly articulated what the real controversy is about.
In the comments I added this:
"**I wish I used the term "spiritual" rather than "religious". My mouth didn't say the right word I guess. I can tell you from my experience, the spiritual world is real. There is something real there. Synchronicity is a real phenomenon for starters. Also, there is nothing wrong with atheism. I do not judge atheists at all. In this video I am just saying that if used responsibly and properly.. magic mushrooms are fun, and that shrooms may give you a spiritual insight or experience. :-)"
Yeah I completely agree about how all of those terms, especially the term "God", have lots of associations to them and can mean very different things to different people.
And I clearly see how someone could think I sound condescending, which yep I believe is the source of the dislikes
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Yeah, to be honest, I think it can take a while to get the language right when sharing our insights - especially when they're still evolving - so the occasional stumble is inevitable, and that's okay. Personally, I try and sidestep the whole religion/spiritual atheist/god set of concepts, because those words are mostly ruined now when it comes to describing "the nature of experiencing". The downside to that is, it means you're back to explaining yourself from the ground up. On the other hand, plenty of people are starting from the other end, and at some point it hopefully joins up in the middle. :-)

POST: Bill Murray gives a surprising and meaningful answer you might not expect.

What does it mean to be "here"? To focus on your visual experience? To focus on SOUND? To focus on the air on your nose? Is being "here" meaning NOT imagining things?

I'd say it's to be aware of yourself as the background context to whatever the content of experience is. By "background" I literally mean that "open aware space" or "perceptual space" that you are, in which your sensory experiences ("the world") and shadow-sensory experiences ("your thoughts") arise.

It's okay to have thoughts and imaginings, so long as you are not narrowed on them - thoughts are just as much "now" as anything else. Conversely, being narrowed on an aspect of sensory experience such that you find yourself 'waking up' when that attention releases - for instance, being spatially concentrated in your attention while reading this message - is also being lost.

In fact, I think a problem a lot of us suffer from, is that we've conflated intending something with narrowing our attention on it - perhaps because it gives us a sense of "doing" - and over time that narrowing becomes more entrenched and the subsequent release much slower. But we don't need to do this at all.

For example, to read the text on this screen, you do not have to deliberately focus or concentrate or manipulate your attention onto it, you can actually stay open and simply intend to read it, and then let the reading "happen" - allowing attention to shift by itself, in the most appropriate way.

A similar lesson applies to physical movements: you do not need to manipulate and control your muscles "manually" in order to stand up from seated position, for example; simply intending and allowing the body to move, is sufficient. (Although if you've built up a long term habit of starting a movement by "re-asserting your current position", it may take a little while to feel out what it's like to "allow" this to happen.)

EDIT: Fixed some mobile autocorrect nonsense plus formatting.

POST: This sub doesn't feel too grounded in reality to me.

I understand in a general sense that we are all one because we are experiencing the same moment (all existence) but fail to see how this colourful language helps beyond that.

Those ideas arise from direct experiences. The same ideas come up again and again in history from various independent traditions. Sure, they are interpretations - but the core experience isn't a general sense of a lack of division or a convergence, it is a direct knowing by experience of this.

In the same way as, say, touching a table surface you know that it is a hard surface. You don't know this generally or through building a conceptual model; it is simply true.

The poetic words and meanderings are then an attempt to put into language something that can't really be put into language. Without the experience behind you, those words don't have much meaning. Just as the word "red" or - better - the world "love" wouldn't mean anything if you had never had the corresponding experiences.

Yes, you assign language meaning through experience.. language is symbolic.

Now --

-- if I have an experience that you've not had, and it's not an experience that has a corresponding visual component so you can't "see me do it" (i.e. I'm not snowboarding), does that make it less "real"?

If there is one thing we can all agree on is that there is an objective reality, Solipsism isn't what we are discussing here (and I doubt someone who genuinely believes Solipsism would budge with their opinion on the truth of it).

[QUOTE]

Solipsism:
Solipsism (i/ˈsɒlɨpsɪzəm/; from Latin solus, meaning "alone", and ipse, meaning "self") is the philosophical idea that only one's own 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. As a metaphysical position, solipsism goes further to the conclusion that the world and other minds do not exist.

[END OF QUOTE]

No, not Solipsism but we want to be clear what we are counting as "real" and not and how the concept of "objective" is arrived at. (And it is a concept, albeit a good one which accurately describes much of our subjective experience.)

We have to admit that we infer what is objective via communication, and that there is a fuzzy area potentially. We discount certain experiences from the "shared" because we lack a way of conveying it.

What we count as "objective" becomes the lowest common denominator of subjective experience.

Yep! There is a lot of interesting aspects of life lost through language. This scene from waking life describes the problem of language in a very good way! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvnQu30kQ2c]

I am a big fan of that film, good reference!

Musing...

Actually, maybe that's a better angle. Rather than "oneness experience", the experience of lucid dreaming and even dreaming in colour are examples of areas which straddle the boundary between objective and subjective. They are subjective experiences but have objective acknowledgement. For a long time it was thought that people dreamed only in black and white - until they didn't. Similarly, our notions of consciousness precluded being awake in a dream, until they didn't.

Putting aside the content of lucid dreams, the fact of lucid dreams is becoming accepted - does this count as part of "objective reality"? Even though it requires practice and training to have the experience?

Of course, the content and meaning of dreams is a different issue. It doesn't help us say what a dream is. I suppose similarly, even if everyone had a "oneness" experience one night, and brain patterns correspondingly changed for the period, it would tell us that there was an experience, but not what it was.

EDIT: The problem with "oneness" is that it really doesn't have any correspondence to a physical act (e.g. in a lucid dreaming, people twitching their eyes by arrangement). It is simply knowledge. And not knowledge of events or relationships either; it makes no predictions. It suffers from the shared language problem, and the shared content problem.

I actually have had DMT many times and high dose mushrooms. The experiences have been reality and life changing but I understand it is brain chemistry being effected and don't feel the need to describe anything as mystical.

Do you understand that, or do you think-assume that? Certainly brain activation changes, but that doesn't explain the actual experience at all. For instance, if I reach an insight about my life during an experience, I cannot find that insight via fMRI, etc. I cannot find the experience in chemistry. So I think both sides - both angles of exploration and description - are valid, but they are "about" different things.

Q: I have never heard of someone 'think-assume'ing. I am sure you just mean 'assume' on its own.
If you think you can't track/analyse an experience down to certain levels scientifically you are very unaware of the breakthroughs in science in the last 15 years.
And even if we couldn't track an experience and measure its value it has on you with certain brain chemicals released such as dopamine that still nothing to do with whether the hallucinations from drug-related or sober experiences have any truth to the nature of our reality.

It was meant to be a "/".
Let's jump to it:

• Does anyone ever have an "objective experience"?
• How do we decide what is "objective" and what is "subjective"?
• How do we decide what is a hallucination and what is not? It's not easy.

EDIT: Just realised I've started two strands on this which kinda overlap. Let's let them both run for one more?

Q: Broadly we need to clarify what objective and subjective mean.
A proposition is generally considered objectively true (to have objective truth) when its truth conditions are met and are "bias-free"; that is, existing without biases caused by, feelings, ideas, etc. of a sentient subject.
So basically to answer all your questions; reality is objective by definition because it is what is real, we as sentient beings experience the world subjectively. There is no such thing as an objective reality and subjective reality working separately, the subjective reality feeds from the objective reality but runs it through the animalistic filter. Both are happening at once.

Yes, let's define!

Perhaps what you've done there is to define "the real" as:

• That which can be experienced subjectively, and
• Can be described to another and understood, and
• Seems to happen "over there" rather than "over here" (where my thoughts and feelings seem to be), and
• Has a stability or persistence to it over a reasonable timescale.

We suppose that it is fed by something we call "objective reality" (which is a concept we have), that this underlies our individual experiences, and that is why we can discuss experiences. However, all we are really establishing is that there is a commonality of descriptions which are a subset of our larger subjective experiences.

So, experiences we can shared descriptions of we call "real" and the rest not. The middle ground is that there are experience some people have had and others have not. Does this mean that their experiences are not "real"? What if having a particular experience requires training to have?

How many people need to have the experience before it is real - or are we only including over-there experiences?

What I'm getting at is, people who describe having a "oneness" experience can be describing an objective reality. We might detect the brain lighting up when someone meditates and they report that experience. How does this differ from the brain lighting up which someone is presented with visual stimulus, and later reports "seeing"

Subjective descriptive language has nothing to do with reality and truth.

Sorry to interject but - really?

It think that this is where you are going astray. Science is itself a subjective endeavour, which chooses to limit accepted findings to those that can be described in language and communicated easily between people. And it is very successful because of this. However, this means it deals with a subset of subjective experience; it does not mean it deals with an "objective" world.

Poetic language is an attempt to point to the aspects of subjective experience that cannot be easily described, and cannot be encapsulated in scientific conceptual frameworks. Typically, poetic language tries to capture the environment within which the subset of science operates. If there is a proposed fundamental truth to reality, if it cannot be subjectively directly perceived then it is simply an idea about reality, not reality itself.

Science never claims to find truth, only to connect "observed regularities" into a coherent description.

Q: I am not sure if we are talking about the same thing here. I am saying that language is merely a descriptive tool of reality.
Just because we can describe something with language doesn't mean it is or has to be true... or have anything to do with reality.
I can describe an amazing purple dragon in the sky above me but that has NOTHING to do with the reality that there is no dragon.

Right, perhaps we are slightly out of alignment. It's not about the dragons though. This isn't about thoughts, this is about direct experience. See if I can be clearer.

Better:

All language is surely an attempt to describe experience. All language describes a subject experience really. Science, implicitly, focussed on observed regular experiences that are seen, visual experiences. It is the most shareable aspect of experience.

Sound and texture too can be translated reasonably well into visual representations, which are then described and shared by language.

One aspect of experience that cannot be easily captured is that of feeling/sensing/direct knowing/direct intuition (we don't even have a proper word for it). Art is an attempt to render that visually. Poetic language is an attempt to invoke imagery to point towards it.

This aspect of experience is as much a part of reality as seeing, hearing, touch - all of which are actually subjective. However our inability to communicate about this particular aspect means it cannot be cleanly represented like the others.

The highlights:

• This isn't about thinking-about things.
• All experience is subjective.
• Some parts of subjective experience (seeing, hearing, touch) are more easy to create shareable representations of than others.
• Just because some aspects of subjective experience are not easy to share in this way does not mean they are not "part of reality". We call this subset "objective reality" but really we mean "easy to share via language".
• It is possible that key information about reality may come in the form of this felt-sense. Without having had the experience, other people will think the description of this as meaningless and poetic. Just as a man who has never seen colours might think descriptions of the world in terms of "vibrant red and blue" as poetic nonsense which isn't part of "reality".

POST: In your opinion, what entails being "awake", and conversely, being "asleep"?

Awakening is realising that you're not the protagonist character in the movie, you're the awareness in the cinema watching the entire drama unfold.

Or you are the screen on which the movie image is playing out. To say you're watching means you are separate. In fact you are both the experiencer and the material from which the experience is made.

This leads me to say:

• Being "asleep" means you've narrowed your attention onto the patterns of experience and are arbitrarily identifying with some of them (e.g. thoughts and body sensations, the concept or feeling thought of "me") and not others (e.g sights and sounds at a distance from body sensations).
• Being "awake" means your attention has opened out to include the context, the background space in which those patterns arise - identifying with that, with "consciousness", and realising that all patterns arise within that. In other words, "it's all you, the real you".

This is awake/asleep in the sense of direct perception, in the sense of understanding "what you really are". There's obviously political, character, and social-based awakenings that one can have too.

Depression, I'd suggest, can be a contraction of attention onto a particular pattern perhaps without knowing it - perhaps as a result of controlling and not releasing - leading to a "stuck thought" or "incomplete movement". For this, I like your analogy of getting tired of holding onto the controller. In truth, you shouldn't be holding onto the controller at all. You should be "directing from afar" by indirect request and with patience, rather than grabbing onto and forcibly pushing parts of your reality around.

POST: What is the most concise explanation of all your knowledge?

[POST]

I've had a number of profound realizations about the nature of the universe and consciousness that make it seem obvious that everything is wonderfully connected and unfolding beautifully. The problem I have though is that this requires being in a particularly high place (whether through substances or meditation) and requires being able to hold a large number of complex ideas in mind simultaneously to see how things are connected and get somewhat of a birds eye view of things. When I'm not in that state, I tend to disbelieve the realizations I had since I no longer have that perspective.

Whenever I come down from those places now I try to pack it all into a way that my normal consciousness can comprehend and believe, but I find that it's never quite enough. What is the most useful idea or ideas that you use to remind yourself of that place when you're not actually there? For example, one of the most concise things I've come across was this post on /r/DMT. I was amazed by how much it related to my own experiences in so few words . What has really summed it up for you?

THE DMT realization

• "Woah, I'm one with the universe."
• "Hold on, subjective universe/reality is a construction of my mind?"
• "Wait a second, the universe is God!"
• "I'm talking to God."
• "We are all a part of God."
• "We are God."
• "I AM GOD"

[END OF POST]

Good linked post.

"Imagine a multidimensional spider's web in the early morning covered with dew drops. And every dew drop contains the reflection of all the other dew drops. And, in each reflected dew drop, the reflections of all the other dew drops in that reflection. And so ad infinitum. That is the Buddhist conception of the universe in an image."
-– Alan Watts

But after the experience of being the net, you withdraw to being a dew drop again - looking out, unaware and unable to directly experience that you are still reflecting everything.

POST: Does my body and consciousness makes the complete me or their individual existence is sufficient to concur who I am?

I am changing every instant of time...

This means that what you are is neither the mind or the body? My favourite little exercise for this attached below. Whatever you really, really are, it can't be something that is changing nor can it be something you are aware of as an object. The eye can see images, but it cannot see an image of itself - only an image about itself, which is not the same thing.

The 'Switch Off Your Senses' Exercise

This little thought experiment is be done '1st person', as if you are having the experience, rather than thinking-about it:

• Sit comfortably. Now imagine turning off your senses one by one:
• Turn off vision. Are you still there?
• Turn off sound. Still there?
• Turn off bodily sensations, such as the feeling of the chair beneath you. Uh-huh?
• Turn off thoughts. Where/what are you now?
• Some people are left with a fuzzy sense of being "located". This is just a residual thought. Turn that off too.

You're still there, you realise; you are a wide-open "aware space" in which those other experiences appeared. This background awareness is the only thing that does not change over time.

POST: What is truth?

Two sorts of truth:

• Conceptual Truth: Systems of thought that are coherent, self-consistent. These "feel true" simply because their parts are true relative to the other parts. Conceptual truth may or may not correspond to reality - i.e. direct perception.
• Direct Truth: The truth of direct experience. I touch a table and discover that its surface is hard. That is directly true; it is my experience right now.

The complication: Adopting a conceptual framework actually deforms your direct experience according to its patterns. We can experience our conceptual truths (beliefs) as being directly true (as filtered). Fortunately, this "overlay" can be identified, dissolved or seen through.

Is there algorithm to the processes we use to identify Direct Truth as a species?

Well, as a personal endeavour one can shift away from thinking-about to direct-sensing. A movement from thinking to knowing. However, this cannot be communicated. The universe we experience is within ourselves. Language involves dividing that experience into "parts" and "narrative". Immediately, in the effort to communicate, we have destroyed the essence of the experience. All that can be done is to point to where that experience is to be found. It cannot be spoken, or conceptualised.

We can transfer conceptual frameworks between one another, and thereby infect others with the same "overlay" or "template" which we are using, but we cannot give someone the truly direct truth by this method. Obviously, if we throw away enough and only focus on the simplest, regular aspects of experience using the simplest concepts, we can get somewhere. For instance, if we say the world is made of up lines and corners and throw away almost everything else, then we can develop shared knowledge and even deterministic predictions of what lines and corners will do in the future.

That's universal language - eventually - but it doesn't seem like something worth shooting for other than for making, y'know, tables and chairs and stuff. (Nothing wrong with tables and chairs, or electron microscopes, but their creation isn't showing us "how things really, really work".)

truth: being in accord with fact or reality

The problem is, the facts change with the being.

...It does - except "the truth": The background awareness that you are, because that is not an object or a structure and so it cannot change. It doesn't "exist" and so it is permanent.

This is the direct truth that is always accessible, always here, because it is that from which everything else arises and fades.

POST: When do you call bullshit?

Things are useful, or not. Or fun, or not. I'll happily enjoy any way of looking at things for a while, because often it can't make your world seem more interesting and exciting - dream kicks! - and just adopting a view does have effects. Nothing is completely bullshit, but nothing is really true either. Fundamentally, the only thing you can be sure of it that you are experiencing what you are experiencing. Everything else is up for grabs. But if anyone talks of "the nature of reality" in terms of some sort of new "building block" or relationship, then that needs to be given a wide berth. The hipster-hippie crowd usually know the best coffee shops though. Sometimes that's worth enduring a crystal conversation or two, surely. ;-)

Q1: I usually test people with the chemtrails concept. If they laugh, we're good.

Oh yeah, good.

POST: Do not play life like a chess game

[POST]

Or you may find yourself missing out on the point of life.

[END OF POST]

A1: Checkmate!

Q1: :)

Q2: Well, the beauty of chess is there are so many different ways to play it! You can play aggressively or defensively. You can play your own strategy or try to foil your opponent's strategy. You can calculate 10 moves ahead, or react to each move as a new situation or opportunity. I think you're missing the point of chess.

Q3: Yes. But which strategy of chess is simply to enjoy the playing of the game?

Q4: I think what should be asked is. Are the players aware they are playing chess?

Or... is chess playing the players?

Q5: What exactly is the point of life? I mean, it's really what you make it be. Hell, I might even go as far as to say that is just a big game.

Q6: I prefer to think of it as a dream, either way, I am going to appreciate the experience.

Who is this "I"...?

And so on. I guess we can waste our time working it out, instead of living it. Chess can be played as an adventure, or a problem to be solved. It can be felt and lived, or stale and stale-mate.

POST: Is it possible to dream awake?

You can do direct-entry dreaming. I first got tipped off on this from David Fontana's Meditator's Handbook. Forget about "brain chemistry", just practice creating multi-modal imagery with your imagination. Then work on stepping into the imagery.

After that, creating alternate stable worlds is quite doable - see here [http://www.dreamviews.com/dream-control/46571-infinite-universes-lucid-dreaming.html].

POST: David Chalmers: How do you explain consciousness? (TED Talk)

Cross posting this comment from the /r/RationalPsychonaut thread in the "other discussions" tab, credit to /u/dalebewan:

There are essentially three 'ideas' for how to answer "What is consciousness?" presented in this video.

1. That consciousness is purely an emergent property of the action of our brains. This is actually something I've always been most comfortable with; that is to say, if we could perfectly replicate a brain, the consciousness within that brain would be identical to the original (until it diverged through different experiences).
2. That consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe, like "space", "time", and the base forces such as electromagnetism, the weak and strong nucleic forces, and gravity.
3. That consciousness is universal, in that it is in itself a description of information integration. The more something integrates information, the more conscious it is. A human brain is an excellent information integrator and thus 'very' conscious. A mouse less so, but still significant. A worm even less. A photon of light many many orders of magnitude less (but still non-zero). But nothing is without consciousness.

When watching the video and listening to these three ideas, what struck me is that it's quite reasonable to say they're all the exact same thing, just different ways of looking at it (primarily the first and the third; but the second still fits to a degree). Consciousness is an emergent property of the brain because consciousness is a universal property that describes information integration, and the brain is an excellent information integrator.

Agreed. Somewhat, though, they are distinct because of a confusion between consciousness and self-consciousness.

Consciousness is the "material" from which the universe is made. But without any patterns within it, it cannot experience itself. Only when the blanket of consciousness has folds within it, can it be conscious of itself. Like a sheet of eyes, it cannot see itself unless it adopts a shape, contours, that one part may "see" another part.

So:

• Consciousness is the fundamental "non-material material".
• Self-consciousness is when consciousness forms itself into a pattern, so one part of the pattern can experience itself relative to another part.
• The more structure, the more "folds" there are in the patterns, the more sophisticated and subtle this experience of content and self.

Does that join the three notions together?

POST: A paradigm shift: The Primacy of Consciousness

[POST]

Amit Goswami is a quantum physicist who is challenging the scientific community with his views on the primacy of consciousness as opposed to the unflinching scientific objectivity that is the dominant paradigm. The full documentary is incredible.

[END OF POST]

Idealism!

Q: hmm, a lot of flakes pretend to be quantum physicists to get cred in spiritual or metaphysics circles, but this guy seems to be the real deal.
I found this interview [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnQ63AOrs6s] where he's talking about awakening.
Interesting guy.

Interesting guy.

...with an interesting hat.

POST: Isn't our inability to recognize dreams from within, reason to question our beliefs of what is real?

[POST]

We all have evidence that we are inept at distinguishing dream from reality. We have all forgotten ourselves within a dream.

[END OF POST]

Yes! :-) [Outside: The Dreaming Game]

Q1: Are you suggesting that realities are interchangeable, like video games in a console? If so, why play this game? I can imagine a more enjoyable experience.

I'm suggesting, mainly, that your experience is that of being an open aware space, with content arising within it - including the dream character you call "you" - and that dreams and waking life therefore seem to be on the same level - rather than dreams being in the Russian Doll of waking life.

So, when this waking life experience fades out, another one might fade in.

Why this "game"? It seems part of the design of this game is that we don't get to remember what we were playing before, and why we chose it. I suspect that's because it makes it more exciting - to think that it's "really real". Of course, lots of us twig at some point during play that all is not as it seems. We never are in danger after all.

Q2: yes, it is. but the hard and more intersting question is, how should this realization change me and my actions?

Q3: If I suddenly found out that none of this was real I would just go sit somewhere until I "died." Refusal and all of that. I imagine if all of this wasn't real there would be some sort of being who is at a higher level. I'd basically just be saying "no" to them while hoping I persist through whatever long enough to meet them and ask "what the fuck were you thinking?"
EDIT: I should mention when I say "found out that none of this was real" I mean that I was told that it is not real. How else could you know for sure?

It is "real" - it just isn't "real" in the way you previously thought. For instance, thoughts are "real" thoughts, apparent objects are "real" apparent objects. It's just that they are only made of sensations; there's no "solid, external world" behind it. Your theory was wrong, that's all.

It is in this sense that this is a dream - and that the world around you (a dream environment) and your apparent self (a dream figure) are "dream objects", made only of "mind". You are actually the background to this experience, not the content.

Do you really only continue to live because you think this is real in some solid way? Can you not enjoy experiences for what they are, not for what you think they could be? Ever had a lucid dream? You realise you a dreaming while in a dream and now, free of fear and with the power to influence you dream more directly, you can explore it more fully...

Your comment:

I imagine if all of this wasn't real there would be some sort of being who is at a higher level. I'd basically just be saying "no" to them while hoping I persist through whatever long enough to meet them and ask "what the fuck were you thinking?"

Reminds me of this:

Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.'
And so time is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation. I mean that's what time is. I mean, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's two thousand and one. And there's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in."
And then she [the woman I was talking to] tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you." then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace." I mean, that's the journey. I mean, everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right?
-- Ch. 18. Trapped in a Dream, Waking Life Movie Transcript

EDIT: Just refreshed and saw the later replies.

If the experience of life is an illusion then no one is truly experiencing anything. It may feel real, but it is not real in this case.

Isn't the problem here what you mean by "real"? It's all "real". Not truly experiencing anything? Everyone is experiencing themselves, but not as a "person". Is the universe only valid if it was created by something external to us? Is there only a "point" to life in that case?

Seems a bit arrogant to go around telling people they are wrong about subjects such as this. Perhaps "I do not agree" would be better. Or do you have proof that you are right that can be verified?

Hmm. I wasn't saying you were wrong 'in real life'. The reply was in the context of the OP saying "this is a dream" and if that was the case, then our theory that there was a solid world behind it would be wrong, and you saying that "in that case, I'd just sit about". I wasn't meaning that you were wrong.

Again, please remember this was all originally about a hypothetical situation. You're talking to me like I actually believe these things and it's confusing.

Sorry, that's just for convenience - by being in the comments, I'm assuming we're "taking the OP proposal as the starting point" and so don't need to keep caveating. Assume "in this scenario" throughout.

Curiosity is the only thing that keeps me going. I feel a need to know how it all works.

That's the tricky bit. If it is a dream-like reality, then any explanation we encounter, any evidence that it was a "solid world made of matter" would also itself just be a dream experience. There is no way out of that. There turns out to be no "how it works", just "how it appears to work when we look at it today".

So instead of curiosity being the driver (it has been for me in the past), it would have to be creativity that became the driver?

Q3: How would it be wrong? If it's a dream then someone has to wake up eventually. If that's a dream too then someone else must too. My argument wasn't for a "solid world." It was talking about the highest level of existence that is being perceived whether whoever is perceiving knows it to be or not.
As far as my feelings go, I don't understand how I can make it any clearer other than saying that I will never be satisfied with existence. When awareness is dissolved I will be satisfied. That is what I consider truly being awake. That is the way out.
No, I do not agree that creativity is the driver. More like the opposite, whatever that is. I do think creativity has its place though. I say curiosity because if I were to suddenly discover proof that this wasn't the "top level capable of perception" then I would not want to go on creating anything adding to our collective awareness.

I think the idea of a "top level" implies a structured hierarchy, and I don't really believe in that - it seems to follow from the notion that we wake up from dreams, that dreams are somehow like a smaller Russian Doll contained within the Russian Doll of waking life.

The experience itself isn't like that though, surely?

I don't wake up "into reality". What seems to happen is that the dream world dissolves, and then "this" world appears - in the same space. One doesn't seem to be inside the other, or higher than the other. I can be 'lucid' inside a dream without switching levels in some sense; can I not be 'lucid' inside this 'waking dream'?

When you die, it might not be "you" that switches perspective to a higher level. If might just be that "you" remain, and the world dissolves. And something else forms in its place.

So, no, as it stands now you cannot be lucid within this "waking dream" if were in fact a dream. You can only delude yourself into believing you are.

Hmm. Thought-provoking.

In a lucid dream, we might realise that we are "dreaming" because we recall "another world" that we were in before sleeping - lucid by memory. However, the nature of our experience can be different to what we assumed, and that is a different path to lucidity.

In fact, I'd suggest that when I get lucid in a dream, it's not that I remember a larger world, rather that I recall the concept of dreaming and my experience fits that concept after that realisation. And this is something we can do in waking life - realise that our experience doesn't correspond to the "solid, mechanistic" theory that we hold of it. We don't need to wake up from the dream, we can just wake up to the dream.

For you to become truly lucid within this waking life it would first need to be proved a dream with science.

Which could never happen, because science is within the dream (following this idea along). However, I can notice that things aren't how they are meant to be. This can only be done by 1st person, personal experience though.

In a lucid dream, we awaken to the fact that we aren't just the dream character we seem to be, we are the entire context of the dream. To become lucid in waking life would to be realise something of the same thing: you are not a person, you are the background environment?

advancements in mathematics and physics

The problem with simulations is that you can always just say that the simulation is such that it looks like this. It depends on whether we mean "simulation" as in 3d mechanism (content matters), or "simulation" as in, we are each presented with a VR-like experience (content is arbitrary) - like Donald Hoffman's idea of a multimodal user interface. The first is just a different version of materialism - it just means the container is different - the latter is a version of the dream/video-game idea. Any content-based proof of a dream while within a dream is made of "dream" - even an apparent memory of there being an encompassing 'waking world' - until we actually wake up from it. So proof would have to be non content-based to wake up to it.

So I'm thinking the 3d lattice idea, for instance, isn't really a restriction that tests for the condition.

I agree that any one of us can only wake up to the dream. And, yes, this would mean knowing, with proof, that we are collectively the sum of all of all our existence. The same concept would apply even if you were to call it a simulation.

Yes, it doesn't matter what we call it, it all just means "we are not living in and as an atoms-and-structure mechanistic world after all". So, meditation and altered state and non-dual experiences, can they point to this? Because I can conceive of no 3rd person 'objective' evidence that can prove it, because that's just more "experiences" and can't really point to the nature of the experiences?

Any content-based proof of a dream while within the dream still proves that it is a dream. So I fail to see an issue with it being made of that dream.

Actually, "proof" is the wrong word, strictly speaking. My error. If a dream is truly a super-flexible space that contain any experience, then I was getting at that it would be impossible to prove with 3rd-person observation. All that can be proved is that other descriptions are incorrect in their correspondence to experience...

When you mention the memory you're talking about the dream as if it itself is the sentient being.

Memory doesn't necessarily mean this. A tray of jello has a "memory", in that if you pour warm water over it, it will "remember" the path of the water and subsequent pouring will tend to flow along previous paths. However, it the jello was "consciousness" it could be said to experience the pathways, the flow.

Note: not necessarily self consciousness, as in an ability to reflect on itself. Only the ability to experience what was within it. Of course, it might label one of those jello-impressions with the word "me" - and then get confused, thinking it was that particular jello-impression, rather than the whole jello tray.

It is a projection of a sentient being. The memory exists within you. You are the source of the dream. The dream isn't the source of you. There is no need to wake up from it to realize this.

Right, but. It depends on the "you". The character/person you seem to be in the dream - the thoughts, body sensations - that "you" is generated by the dream. The dream is the source of the "you" that you seem to be in the dream. The larger "you" is the whole of the dream, it turns out once you've woken up. You could realise this during the dream, if you could find some evidence that the "small you" was not in fact the real you, and that you were in fact the whole environment and the source of that environment. Leading us to...

I do not think meditation, or altered states, can bring anyone any closer to the nature of experiences than walking down the street. To understand the nature of experience we would need to first fully understand and be able to replicate consciousness. To say that anyone is truly experiencing anything right now is delusion. It is putting faith in unverifiable experience.

I disagree.

I'd say the way to understand the nature of experience is to fully investigate your personal experience directly. When in a night-time dream, the way (one way) to realise you are dreaming and become lucid is to note a difference between the dream and wake-time experience. However, the dream content can still be completely identical to waking life experience. How would you tell the difference if you couldn't remember a "waking level"? In most dream, in fact, we don't.

Examining dream character's brains and looking through electron microscopes in a dream wouldn't tell you that you were dreaming. Scientists have dreams like that all the time, and don't - in the dream - realise they are dreaming.

Perhaps waking life is one such dream?

If there is such a hypothetical approach - to identify we are dreaming when we don't remember a larger "waking life", or let's say "alternative world-experience to get rid of the layers metaphor - we could then apply that to this "waking level" to test, from a personal perspective, whether this daily life was dream-like in the same way. Again, the content of the dream is unreliable, it can only tell us that our in-dream theories are wrong as they apply to dream content. Examination of the content cannot tell us whether we are in a dream or not.

When I say "you" I don't mean who you see yourself as in everyday waking life. I mean whatever makes you fundamentally you, separate from everyone else.

Yeah, that's what the quotes are for, to emphasise that it's a constructed idea, a particular meaning rather than the general meaning, drawing attention to it.

A tray of jello does not have memories.

Jello has about as much memory as neurons, in the example. Y'know, it's a metaphor.

When I say "you" I don't mean who you see yourself as in everyday waking life. I mean whatever makes you fundamentally you, separate from everyone else. The dream does not create this. The dream can never create this.

And, what is it that makes you fundamentally you? If you don't know what that is, you can't comment on whether a dream can create it or not. If this is a dream, then it can obviously create everything you are experiencing.

Which scientist with electron microscopes have you been talking to? Working to figure out physics in a dream would be immensely harder due to the constantly changing environment.

I think we can agree that sleeping dreams are more flexible than waking life. It's not true that they can't be stable though: non-lucid dreams are usually more stable than lucid ones, and the variable nature of lucid dreams is down to the flaky expectations of the dreams; it's easy to have stable lucid dreams if you mentally commit to it.

And I'm pretty committed to waking life.

Are you saying if we discovered a philosophical zombie you would not begin to suspect that this is a dream?

You wouldn't know it was a philosophic zombie; you'd just think the person was a bit "strange". We meet people like that all the time. Perhaps they are p-zombies.

Examination of the content could tell us it's a dream if we collectively do in fact have a waking life we cannot remember now. It would just be a matter of locating the right information. So looking at the content for this purpose is not entirely useless.

What would the right information be?

See, I'm still not seeing how you plan to establish that this is or isn't a dream. We've put aside the ability to remember another waking life that's "higher up". So it's down to the content. Stability doesn't cut it, because some dreams are more stable than others; some are rock-solid. Any content we encounter in the dream is made of dream-stuff, it's self-referencing and so can't tell us about the nature of the background to the experience.

POST: pineal gland story/question.

[POST]

I hope this is the right place to ask, I feel like of any other subreddit I know of, my brothers and sisters could tell me. This requires some back story.
I first heard about "activating" your pineal gland threw a friend of mine, but she called it, "popping your front lobe" I've not been able to find anything on line referring to that practice. What I did find out on my own, and then afterwards some research is that you can make your pineal gland aware of its self.
I've been doing this in addition to meditation on and off for a few years. Pretty much when I reach the calm state of meditation, thoughts slow down or stop, and breathing is shallow and not forced. I begin "massaging" my brains pineal gland. I use to do this by imaging my hands coming up and reaching into my skull threw my eye sockets. Then by using my thumbs to rub part of my brain. Currently after enough practice I can do it with out meditating, and with out imagining my hands going into my skull, or holding my brain. It use to always just pulse. Just this pulsing feeling up and down threw that small part of my brain, never really did anything more than that, and I never felt that I got any benefit from it; yet, I kept doing it.
Last night something strange happened. Just thinking about it, typing it, and actively thinking; I can feel my brain cooling down. Like a cold chill, relaxing. Anyway, I was doing my normal thing while meditating. I begin to feel my brain more so that usual, like the pulsing of my pineal gland has begun to spread.
As more and more parts of my brain began to feel this it reached just over 50% and I felt this sudden chill on my brain. I could only chill about 85%. It also felt as if I was sitting further back in my mind than I normally do. Trying to explain this, my normal perception of my mind and body with my eyes closed, compared to during this "chilled brain" I felt almost disconnected from myself, but I wasn't, just sitting further back.
Afterwards I wanted to stop, I was unsure of this new territory and had already been at it for a while. My brain, with in 30 seconds had warmed up past a normal temperature and felt like I had a nice warm brain glow.... after about 5 minutes I felt normal.
No drugs were involved, and I'd like to find out more about what happened. Is this transcending into a higher state? Over activating my pineal gland to a dangerous level?
Thank you for your time.

[END OF POST]

Like seeing from the core [http://www.reptilianagenda.com/brain/br121804d.shtml]? (Ignore the nature of the website, the article itself is from a conference and it's the only copy I could find with free access.)

Q: Thanks. I'll give it a read, about to go into work so I'll get back to you. Thanks again!!
Edit. I have enough time to read and reply before I have to clock in. I was laying in a dark room with my eyes closed so I can't recall my vision improving. I do however have pretty good eye sight. 20/13 when I was in high school and has been better than 20/20 during my yearly eye exams for work. I'll see what I can do with this new information.

From my experience, it's something more than just "things being in focus", say. It's also somehow about being "home and relaxed" and the seeing being effortless - just there and laid out before you. "Vision and awareness" rather than eye-sight?

Shifting your centre of attention - where you "look out from"; don't actually concentrate your attention there, keep it open - to different regions of your head and body (behind forehead, central line, lower base of skull, jaw, central chest, lower abdomen) gives experience quite a different "quality" I find. Be interested to hear what you get from playing with it.

POST: I know it has been said for a long time, but I'm really starting to notice that a trend towards society waking up

[POST]

If you look at the front page of reddit right now there are advancements in science that are for the benefit of the Earth as opposed to big business. Fewer than 18% of Americans smoke cigarettes. We're seeing a population that is starting to focus their attention on the injustices of world and call BS. Ferguson may not be our brightest hour as a species, but it is a sign that things are heading in the right direction. People are fed up with nonsense and MORE importantly, willing to take action for that which makes sense.
The internet is informing us at newer and faster rates than ever before, and yeah, we're using it to spread memes - but we're using it to educate ourselves too. Mainstream media is dying out. The revolution of self-governed media intake has begun. This is huge.
I really feel society is not a lost cause anymore. I think we can salvage the good bits, with the aid of technology and action, for a future that is free and peaceful. It's not something I'm taking for granted, but it's something I have the motivation and belief that it is no longer futile to work towards. I call upon you, Psychonauts, to keep being you, and doing it in as many ways as you can or want to! Our society is no longer a place where free-thinkers must hide-away in secret societies. Upload your thoughts to twitter, start blogs, tell your friends what you truly feel about the world! Together we might just wake up in a paradise...
The truth is no longer taboo. Spread it like semen. The facets of control will try to suppress us but like a teenager who sees cleavage we are unstoppable in our desire to undress truth from the restrictive bondage of censorship that has been imposed on us for far too long.
Even now I almost went to bed without posting this, out of fear it was too melodramatic, but fuck it. We vote with our voices and actions. Use this information as you will.

[END OF POST]

The truth is no longer taboo. Spread it like semen. The facets of control will try to suppress us but like a teenager who sees cleavage we are unstoppable in our desire to undress truth from the restrictive bondage of censorship that has been imposed on us for far too long.

So, who's going to set up /r/TruthFap? ;-)

Much of what you say is true, but not in terms of the history of the planet, really just this societal go-round. The free access to historical information is the big change, but societies have risen send fallen in this cycle of understanding-and-overthrow for centuries. It is rarely about transformation; it is usually about reset.

Q1: /r/TruthPorn sounds better IMO

Probably fits a bit better.

EDIT: Deleted my bad idea in the second sentence.

Q2: It is about consistency. The best analogy of it is that it is like driving a car. Just because the car couldn't always be at 60mph doesn't mean that you should stop driving the car, when you know that is only doing it again and again to always be in that state. So, it is matter of also not judging how you need to do it again and again, because even we do same things in our lives everyday. You always have to wake up from your bed, eat, take a shit, go to work, doing what you do everyday, rest, sleep, etc. Why would having a peaceful and connected society be any different? For corruption, crimes, and so-called injustice acts that cause an effect to society, they must be repeatedly done to continue to exist.

Perhaps peace gives rise to violence, justice give rise to corruption, calm gives rise to the storm. A reset gives rise to a overshoot gives rise to a reset.

POST: Are we just biological computers with unconscious on/off switches? Is it possible we are all being run by a program called FreeWill.exe?

"The Eyes are the WindowsTM to the Soul."

If you look really closely in the mirror at your eyes, you'll see a small piece of lettering: "Version 3.1". It explains a lot.

POST: My limbo

I feel like I can gain no further insights about life.

Just give up on it. You'll never have any intellectual answers that satisfy; you'll just keep creating more complex thought-structures (stories) that are circular. Take a step back. If there is "an answer" or a "how things really are", then the answer must already be here, and how things are now must be how things really are.

Q: This is what I try to do, but it never goes away

Stop trying even to make it go away; that persists it. Just let it sit there - and go about your other business.

Q: Thanks, I'll try

Haha, no don't try!

Today's Ill-Conceived Metaphor

Think of it as, say, having a loose thread on your shirt. The thing to do is, leave the thread (nagging question) alone. Occasionally you might catch sight of the thread, and be tempted to get 'pulled in' to pulling at the thread. But you know that's just going to make your shirt (concentration, focus, balance, thoughts) unravel - you've done it before, it didn't help - so you let go of that idea and carry on with your work. You leave it be.

Then one day you realise it wasn't a loose thread at all, but part of the overall pattern of your shirt. Suddenly you see it! It's so obvious, it's just there without any effort!

The more you concentrated on the thread, the less you could see the whole pattern. You squinted your eyes to focus, you bent your vision out of shape, you got in too close. The more you pulled at the thread, you disrupted the pattern, ruined it.

Only when you gave up, and got on with other things, could your senses and perspective settle, and be ready for the insight.

POST: What is your theory of everything?

Q1: Everything is. Maybe.

Q2: Is is what is. Its all is.

All is Is.

POST: Rupert Spira discusses the nature of awareness

Yeah. Recommend his books, Presence Vol I & II. You can read a sample here. Greg Goode's book The Direct Path is similar.

the felt sense of separation being much more persistent than the intellectual view

Yes, this. Oddly, was just talking to someone about this very point, try to come up with the best way to describe it.

Because the "felt sense of separation" is basically a persistent tension or a "stuck, attached thought" in your direct, ongoing experience. Thoughts about being separate or whole come and go, as does all thinking-about. Meanwhile, direct-experiencing persists and is literally how the world is for you, right now.

You can only get rid of it by it happening to collapse, by attending to it while also attending to space (what Spira's work does), or more forcefully by deliberately overwriting it with open space via intention.

But since people don't really understand that they are experiencing a "sensory-mind-dream" in the first place, this doesn't make any sense to them. Spiral is by far the best at leading to this in modern language, I reckon. Although Francis Lucille is a good read too (related).

Glad to hear about the book and mediations. I'm always on the look out for new exercises for myself and others.

Q1: Well said! I've had to discover this in a groping-in-the-dark kind of way as clarifying the view and settling the mind chatter didn't bring the liberation I had expected. I think of the body as a sort of data compression for the long-term storage of thought, and exploring that is a sort of "down and through" process instead of the "up and out" (mental transcendence) that I was hoping for. I guess that's why everyone's talking about embodiment these days.
deliberately overwriting it with open space via intention.
I'm not totally sure I understand what you mean. Got an example?
I'm always on the look out for new exercises for myself and others.
Same here. Please share anything good you come across. I'm sure you know of Douglas Harding's brilliant experiments. I happened to notice your link to Gendlin's "felt sense", and I've found his focusing really useful. Tom Stone has some good techniques in a PDF called Pure Awareness (can't link from phone), but there's a bit of cheese factor too.

Embodiment

Yes, quite so! One of my first insights came from trying to improve my eyesight: I found an article about "seeing from the core", which basically amounted to shifting the location you are centred in and "looking out from". Then I encountered someone who suggested that rather than attending to the head area (third eye or whatever), one should go as "deep down as possible" - effectively, your lower core.

Effectively, what you're after is to centre yourself in a body-space location that doesn't suffer from accumulated tension and hence is a source of ongoing thought-generation, nor leads to the accumulation of tension.

I'm not totally sure I understand what you mean. Got an example?

Lie down (constructive rest position), get relaxed. Let go completely. Now expand your "presence" (whatever you want to call that, Peter Ralston calls it feeling-awareness, which I like) to fill the volume of your body, and then beyond into the room. Now intend that to be open empty space. You will experience push-back because - like with Gendlin's Focusing - you are asserting something (empty openness) that isn't true. Stay with it. Gradually your current experience will move towards the intended experience, the goal you've set it, of open space. Essentially, you are simply accelerating the natural release/dissolving process.

Same here. Please share anything good you come across.

This one is fun (turning off your senses and recognising you are still there, couched in this instance of the subreddit's "life is a video game" premise), and the "where is your real hand?" exercise is good for pointing out you are in a dream (you can't point to your real hand, it is "outwith the experiential space"; if you say "in my head" you try to find your "real head", so in what sense do you have a real hand or a real head?).

Yes, Douglas Harding is very good. Although I will say that it can lead to the sense of being absent in the head area without it necessarily expanding to the experience of being a complete background to all experience, and he doesn't really talk in that way. Not heard of Tom Stone; will give him a look. Greg Goode's The Direct Path, um, what else...

Anything that isn't the Tony Parsons "you-can't-do-anything", repeat-the-same-words approach!

Q1: Great stuff, TriumphantGeorge! I'm not familiar with Ralston, so I look forward to checking him out.
I really get the lowering, or balancing of the the centre of attention, cuz I've found the sense of being behind the eyes to be the source of a lot of unpleasant energy buildup in the head.
I just got back from a week of working one-on-one with a retired Direct Path/Daoist teacher, doing all kinds of embodiment exercises and learning about the different bodies (energy, astral etc.). I'm still sorting out what seems useful at the moment.
Nice to chat with you. You've clearly done a lot of exploring. Feel free to drop me a note if you come across anything inspiring. Cheers!
edit: Oh, and by the way, your game analogy and diction was stellar :)

cuz I've found the sense of being behind the eyes to be the source of a lot of unpleasant energy buildup in the head.

It can be. The head is a tricky area. There is a spot about halfway back, on the vertical centre line, which feels like "home", but most people go too far back or too far forward. It's easier to go further down that line, to the chest or abdomen. Why do it the hard way? :-)

Nice to chat with you. You've clearly done a lot of exploring. Feel free to drop me a note if you come across anything inspiring. Cheers!

And you - happy exploring!

POST: I have crippling social phobia.

Meditation, mindfulness, daily relaxation, contemplate the nature of what you are?

The longer it goes on, the more "stuck inside" you can get. Anxiety becomes a feeling that you, ironically, become comforted by or afraid to let go of, without knowing it.

You need to expand your "attention/presence out" into the world again. You are probably tightly localised inside, stuck at the back of your head, with your crazy amygdala just loving it! Just a daily relaxation where you lie on the floor, let go, and imagine-feel 'expanding into the room around you' can help loosen off the hold. (Note: this will feel a bit daunting/exposing at first, but then it will feel great.)

Some ideas to explore: This guy [http://www.anxietynomore.co.uk/] has some interesting things to say on anxiety. The Alexander Technique can help you regain control of your body and mind without tension and effort. Rupert Spira's books are good at exploring awareness, as is Douglas Harding.

POST: Having a hard time understanding Alan Watts.

Maybe read one of his more general easier books like What is Zen? to get a flavour of him first. Or try Rupert Spira's Presence Vol I & II and Douglas Harding's Head Off Stress for another approach to essentially the same fundamental insight. Then you can return to the 'world-level philosophy' stuff.

Remember also that Watts saw himself as a "philosophical entertainer" as much as anything, so often he is having fun and playing with us as well as offering insight. Sometimes, over time, that can obscure rather than help.

...

Q1: Give us an example of a paragraph that you don't understand.

Q2: In the second chapter The Game of Black and White he goes on about how there is an off for every on, an up/down, space/no space, good/bad, etc, etc. I understand that. But I completely blacked out when he started talking about our future as plastic being with inorganic body parts. I couldn't see the correlation between the two clearly.

Q1: There isn't an elegant way to really explain what he's trying to say fully in this chapter, but in my interpretation, he's trying to show all the ways we try to control ourselves and nature, and how futile it is when we don't really know the consequences of our attempts to control things (GMOs as an example).
He's also making the point that all this technological progress doesn't really move us anywhere, and that we're still as unhappy as ever.
Watts' style is to slowly build up his points through metaphors and what-ifs so that you can more deeply see the point he is trying to make. What I wrote up there may be simpler, but it's not nearly as rich. If you don't yet see the connections, just keep going. You'll either see it soon, usually the end of a chapter, or you'll get it later on the toilet or something. :)

Watts' point is that it doesn't really bring us fundamental happiness, if it's bound up with struggle to control. Which I think is fair. I don't think he's against, say, washing machines and computers as such.

It's not clear that the everyday life is much better, though, taken as a whole. Inequality is still massive, and in many respects people have less control over their lives than in earlier times. Every skyscraper that gets built needs a slum somewhere in the world to compensate for it, and that's a situation that only gets more extreme as resources require more effort to extract. Still: Fusion?

Watts' argues that progress is guaranteed or always beneficial. Our current optimistic science view says that "things always get better", we're always pushing history on, we're always on the up. But this isn't really true. Past civilisations were probably a lot nicer to be in than ours. We are ourselves probably hitting the end of a super-cycle, with multi-bump financial collapse on the way, and our global, just-in-time supply-chain dependencies could well be our undoing.

But: The Internet.

I wouldn't fancy going back in time to before The Nice Things!

Q3: Watts' point is that it doesn't really bring us fundamental happiness, if it's bound up with struggle to control. Which I think is fair.
Well, I don't want to get too in-depth about this conversation since we seem to be more in agreement than not. But, one thing:
More or less, I think that alleviating basic material suffering is largely a pre-requisite for achieving the sort of "fundamental happiness" you and Watts are talking about. It may not be possible to convert suffering directly to happiness, but alleviating suffering is an excellent first step towards that conversion.
Sort of like how you can't build a house without a having a foundation first.
As long as a people are still having to spend their days worrying primarily about where their next meal is coming from, any sort of higher enlightenment is all-but impossible. (See also: Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs.) Once people are comfortable enough to believe they have food, shelter, and clothing for the foreseeable future, their options for personal growth and mental progress become far greater.
And since those struggles for control are also based largely in day-to-day material needs, this suggests that further alleviation of such basic suffering should (hopefully) lead to fewer harmful struggles over control of those materials. ie, No one cares who "owns" a river, if everyone nearby still has access to it.
Just look at how, in the last 70 years, Europe has gone from 2,000+ years of effectively nonstop warfare to being a relatively stable, prosperous, and peaceful united community. And the defacto leader (or first-among-equals) of the EU today is the country that, 70 years ago, was considered among the most evil and harmful in all of history. Now that's karmic progress! :->
(OK, that was kinda in-depth after all...)

That was an enjoyable read! We pretty much do agree.

Although I'd perhaps add that before people started living to 80 years old, they were happy enough living to 40 years old. In that sense "happiness" is context-based.

Sure, we might also say that "enlightenment" is possible in all circumstances, because it's insight-led - but certainly being well-fed and having access to infinite informational resources makes it more likely. Not being afraid of "death at any moment" surely is beneficial overall for lots of things!

The quest for control moves its target as society changes. Before, it was about making people dig holes in fields for framing, by physical intimidation. Much later, it was about having them support the interest of the powerful (such as consumerism as a strategy for managing "overproduction") by psychological manipulation. Today, it's about the use of both, because the tide of recent progress is receding again. "Human resources" are the basic energy input to high society. In each case, everyone strives to have power over their own existence, and this always requires (even if implicitly) having power over others' existence in support of that. While resources are plentiful, only the lower level really sees suffering; everyone is given a practical level of freedom. In tighter times, the ladders are drawn up, and the illusion of progress for all is shattered.

Viewing "technology" not only as material but also psychological, then we might say that "technology" and "progress" doesn't lead to happiness or not - rather, the extent to which we are free to be ourselves and determine our lives does. And that has varied wildly over time.

(Ah. Went on a bit there...)

POST: "The universe gives you what you need, not necessarily what you want". Alot of questions regarding purpose of life, universe, reason.

You infer purpose and your character from the thoughts that appear in your mind, the actions you end up doing, and the circumstances that arise in your environment.

Your purpose is what you end up doing, if left to 'unfold' without interfering with yourself.

Everything else is theorising.

POST: [serious] Do you believe that free will exists?

The point is really that your decisions should be the best decisions possible. You don't want to be free to do just anything random, you want to be free to do "the best thing".

That involves having the most information, the most accurate and comprehensive information, feeding into your decisions. If you focus on the mind, you will make decisions based on theory. If you focus on the body, you will make decisions based on emotion. If you expand your awareness to "all that is", though, then your decisions will take into account everything: the universe.

So really the only decision you ever need to make is to say "yes" to letting go, releasing your narrow attention, and letting the universe act through you - because that is going to be the best decision, the ideal path anyway.

From the Richard Linklater film Waking Life (transcript here [Deleted]):

Actually, there's only one instant, and it's right now, and it's eternity. And it's an instant in which God is posing a question, and that question is basically, 'Do you want to, you know, be one with eternity? Do you want to be in heaven?' And we're all saying, 'No thank you. Not just yet.' And so time is actually just this constant saying 'No' to God's invitation. I mean that's what time is. I mean, and it's no more 50 A.D. than it's two thousand and one. And there's just this one instant, and that's what we're always in.
...actually this is the narrative of everyone's life. That, you know, behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that's the story of moving from the "no" to the "yes." All of life is like, "No thank you. No thank you. No thank you." then ultimately it's, "Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace." I mean, that's the journey. I mean, everyone gets to the "yes" in the end, right?

TL;DR: Do I have a choice?

POST: Synchronicity and the forces of change.

Q: my parents are around the same age as yours. i've talked about synchronicity a few times with my mother before, more of just how it is a peculiar phenomenon. i was in england (which to me is a pretty magical place to being with) with her a few months ago and that whole vacation was like the most synchronicity i ever experienced. every single day we would talk about a topic and then boom we'd see it referenced all over the place. it was actually pretty crazy and mystical in it's own way. i went on that trip in june and it really did me a lot of good, got me out of a slump. i live in quebec and last winter was just a long rough cold shitty winter. i was really just bummed out by the end of it. not so much depressed, but just down. but after that vacation i felt rejuvenated. my thinking was more 'psychedelic'. i could see more possibilities, i was more positive.
but ya even before that my mom had said she most definitely experienced it. though i didn't really delve into discussing any deeper meaning about it with her. i'm still not totally convinced that most of the times i've experienced it that it was not just purely coincidence. funny thing is i've had the exact same thing happen while watching jeopardy too. i'd be talking with my mother and right there the topic we're discussing turns out to be in one of the questions. that is another layer of synchronicity between you and i now haha.
it's definitely an interesting thing when it happens. not sure what to make of the whole thing. to me surely everything is connected, i experienced that, but i don't know if one thing makes the other happen if you know what i mean.
my bad for the long drawn out post, i'm kind of just venting. but there's one more thing i'll say since it sort of falls into this topic of having a sort of 'epiphany' and trying to share it with people, and with me going on a vacation.. well, i think at this point it was two years ago, i had went on a 3 or 4 week long vacation with my best friend. we went through europe and it was just amazing. i had so much fun and i was seeing all sorts of interesting, new things. well anyway, by the end of that vacation it was like a fucking psychedelic trip! i don't know what the hell happened to me, but i have not been able to feel like that since. i honestly would say i hit the closest i have possibly come to being 'enlightened', without really using any drugs either. but as soon as i got back home and started interacting with 'normal' people again, had to go back to work, etc, it all faded! in a matter of weeks, i was back where i started. and then this past winter, i even hit new lows! what point does this have to do with your post? well, i guess i was trying to to share what i was experiencing and people would just brush it off. and eventually it got to the point that i no longer felt that way. so in a way maybe these experiences are so personal that it doesn't matter what other people think and trying to explain it actually takes the meaning out of it.

That was a good rant, got me thinking.

I don't think one thing causes the other, so much as "they are aspects of the same pattern", or something like that; it's all one thing.

I wonder if being with other people, in a clockwork daily life, just wipes out that sense of connectedness or wonder or whatever it is; it seems to close you back up and make you withdraw. Maybe because daily life tends not to be very stimulating, it's on repeat? The feeling of adventure and looking fades away.

POST: The thin line of self reflection

Why try to stop thoughts? They're just part of the environment. Let them be - unless it's a particularly useful one. They'll settle down by themselves, just as - say - muscular tension settles down if your stop fiddling with it. If you fight something, you imply an opponent, and a fighting-back. Better to accept the content of experience, release focus and settle perspective to the background awareness again. Good point that thoughts imply character or the structure of ego, though. But is enough that the thought appears and you recognise it; you don't need to do anything about it.

POST: If we are all God...

Not having a belief system makes it incredibly hard to set up any meaningful goals and pursue them.

This is difficult. After much messing about, and playing with 'subjective idealism' (dream-world) stuff and so on, I figured that if almost everything is arbitrary than what matters is what I am experiencing. So goals should be able the experiences you want to have, rather than things and 'achievements'. And the way to set experiences as goals is to spend regular time imagining them from a 1st person perspective, summoning the feeling of already having the experience - a la the old Neville Goddard 'adopt the feeling of the wish fulfilled approach (retro here [http://www.prayertheartofbelieving.com/]).

EDIT: This conversation reminds me of an experiment blogger Steve Pavlina tried, where he adopted the belief of a 'subjective dreamworld' and tried it out, with various results [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2010/09/hacking-reality-subjective-objectivity/]. There was a three part Q&A in response to readers [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2006/05/subjective-reality-qa/] and related articles [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/04/your-own-private-universe/] vs lucid dreaming [https://stevepavlina.com/blog/2007/09/subjective-reality-vs-solipsism/].

Q1: Watts said that if you were God, you would probably eventually end up losing yourself just for the thrill of it.

Q2: I would definitely like to believe this to be true. :)

Q3: Could God create a creature capable of forgetting that it is God?

Q2: No doubt he could, the question I want to know is why.

For the adventure! Because he knows he'll wake up afterwards, and remember it's an illusion, it doesn't matter what happens in the dream. "Whew! What a ride!", he'll exclaim. And dive in again.

...

Q4: Okay. No. Stop this bullshit where you pretend that thousands of people dying of starvation, people sawing off other people's heads and the millions of other horrors that make up this existence are somehow 'perfect'. That's just bullshit.
I think Bhuddist philosophy (this whole, life is suffering ergo suffering is a okay) is just as damaging as any Christan dogma ever was. The Spanish Inquisition was nasty, but this 'all is okay' clap trap explains that it doesn't even matter!
It's a philosophy for the intellectually lazy, the smug and the easily satisfied and I don't believe it's okay for one second. And I'm pretty sure you wouldn't either if you were to truly experience the horror of what some people's lives actually are.
The top post on this comment is a ridiculous dismissal of all that is by comparing the suffering of millions to 'god mode' on a video game. As I type this, there's the statistical likelihood that several hundred people are being raped and murdered. That's not fucking okay, and no amount of saying everything is perfect and humming a bit is going to change that.
The world is not a dream. The world is not perfect. The world is inhabited by fierce and perverted monkey creatures some of whom thrive on death and mayhem and pain and there's nothing 'perfect' about that.

Is that really what Buddhism says? I had to look it up, mind:

When we encounter phenomena, and have a feeling of dislike, worry or pain, we say that there is "suffering". This should not be generalised to "all life is suffering", because there is also a lot of happiness in life! Noises are disturbing but nice melodies bring happiness. When one is sick, poor, separated from loved ones, one has suffering. But when one is healthy, wealthy, together with one’s family, one is very happy. Suffering and happiness exist in all phenomena. Actually where there is happiness, there will be suffering. They are in contrast with each other. If’ we only say that life is suffering when things do not go according to our wish we are rather foolish.
The Buddha says, "Life is suffering". What does "suffering" mean? The sutras say: "Impermanence therefore suffering". Everything is impermanent and changeable. The Buddha says that life is suffering because it is impermanent and ever-changing. For example, a healthy body cannot last forever. It will gradually become weak, old. sick and die.
One who is wealthy cannot maintain one’s wealth forever. Sometimes one may become poor. Power and status do not last as well, one will lose them finally. From this condition of changing and instability, although there is happiness and joy, they are not ever lasting and ultimate. When changes come, suffering arises.

Seems more like, "life involves change, nothing is permanent, the experience of change is unpleasant".

The world is a dream, in the sense that we overlay our thoughts on top of our experience and so perceive our views rather than what is there. It is perfect in the sense that it is all in balance and working together in harmony (food chains, etc).

POST: How I believe time works

[POST]

The "Zipper" represents (you in) the present.

It binds all the possibilities to make one true reality.

It goes from bottom to top.

Adding perspective to it.

Looks like a book, doesnt it?

The book gets bigger and bigger every seconds.

It's huge.

Here's the book.

[END OF POST]

...I agree, nicely put. Thinking-about something requires that you turn it into conceptual objects and arrange them relative to one another in space. We end up with "moments" and "timelines" and "branches" and "dimensions" and so on. But those are mental diagrams of an idea called "time". If you check your actual experience, you cannot find that "time" at all, except when you think about it. In other words, it's only ever a concept. Time only exists upon reflection. Time is a conceptual pattern (an idea about change) upon which we hang other conceptual patterns (ideas about events). We create pretend objects then put them in a pretend relationship. It's still fun to play with though, and I doodle with that sort of thing all the time (ahem [The Infinite Grid of All Possible Moments]).

POST: Continuity

[POST]

O this post could be so long but I'm going to make it brief. How much value do you guys place on continuity in your experience? Would you trade continuity for super powers? How about bliss? Nirvana?

[END OF POST]

Discontinuity all the way.

Wow, a discussion on a 6 day old thread nice! I agree, discontinuity allows more freedom in a way, and in a sense the continuity we experience is kind of imagined. I mean, we are never the same as we were, we just think we are. Makes me feel a little less sad about losing one of my favourite notebooks (believe it or not the same notebook from my story on glitch_in_the_matrix, which I take it you read) where I wrote down a lot of my passions and dreams. They're bound to change anyway, but still it hurts.. I want it to show up. I guess that's me wanting continuity. I'm a conflicted soul in this way.

Was browsing and the title caught my attention (I love the idea of "discontinuities).
Anyway -

• We are always the same "background", but the content changes.

Discontinuities in the content would make life far more flexible. If you don't mind things appearing/disappearing, your circumstances changing dramatically, your environment shifting - you can have everything, potentially! But you can also lose everything, potentially. If you are willing to let your world be that ephemeral, then one moment may not lead to the next. All vision might fade...

Thing is, where was that notebook when it wasn't in your hands? It was just a thought in your head (or actually, a 'background feeling/knowing'). The thing itself wasn't anywhere. You never had it in the first place, much.

But, yeah, I know what you mean. Losing things hollows out a bit of your emotional self/content, and leaves a gap. A petit mort! Time for a magickal spell, perhaps, to have it re-materialise?

EDIT: Have you thought about how you might capitalise on/create discontinuities?

Isn't the world already that ephemeral, it's just I don't perceive it to be.. yet?

Yes, it is, I would say.

The Model

My general model for this is, quickly:

• Think of yourself as the background of experience, the 'awareness' in which it arises.
• Experiences arise, and leave traces.
• Those traces then structure subsequent experiences, leaving traces, deepening patterns, creating tendencies.
• Unfolded objects > enfolded forms > unfolded objects > . . .
• Experiences then tend towards stability => objects and narrative.
• We could call these laws (apparent physical laws, cause and effect), habits (repeated actions) and beliefs (lighter patterns structuring our perception).
• But: There is no "real" underneath. Like hypnogogia before sleep, sparkles > fragments > images > objects > environments > dreams. Randomness becomes stability, unfolding both deterministically and creatively.

Anyway, with that out the way, the content of our experience is just that, it's just what we perceive and nothing more. Objects are made of "eyes and fingers", with no solid backing.

In a lucid dream, if you declare a new fact (state a new belief) and don't resist it, the experience comes to be. Content aligns with your beliefs. I think that waking life is very similar, albeit more stable and sluggish, because it has been around a lot longer than your dreams; it has solidified. But all that is preventing a complete discontinuity isn't the continuousness of content - that is illusory - it is the stability of the beliefs or 'enfolded forms' in awareness.

The Implication

If you start tinkering with your beliefs and expectations, your experiences tend to adjust. You get coincidences and synchronicities. It's as if your world tries its best to "line up" with what you've decided the facts should be. This is how "magickal traditions" all work at their root.

But the kicker: Adopting a new belief, or "inserting new facts", is easy: you simply declare the new truth. No effort required. However, you must completely let go of resistance to what happens, to the change, and to the new idea. (Fun free book by Alan Chapman which discusses similar ideas, here.)

That's quite frightening. Anything could happen.

Getting extreme and unlikely: Say something happened in the past and you'd like to change it. Say you could, by simply lying down, letting go completely, and declaring it so - say you could suddenly find yourself "reset" to that time. Would you do it? If I told you (I'm not, but as an emotional experiment) that this could be done. Would you? I reckon you'd find it hard to make yourself do it. The implications for the reality of your surroundings, what "people" really are, etc, are pretty disconcerting!

An Experiment

You should try an experiment, via the Alan Chapman book maybe. Simply declare: "My book will come to me this month" or "My book is coming to me this month" - it has to be worded as a present fact - and let that become true to you. ;-)

Note: It's about the feeling of it being true, rather than imagining it in pictures or whatever. Simply the statement, and the acceptance of the feeling. It's a fun experiment. Whether it works, who can tell - - -

I've experimented a bit with discontinuities, but you have to be careful. The truths you adopt really do have an effect: So, if you start thinking poorly of yourself, for instance, then things line up very quickly to prove you right! I've seen depressive people enter massive doom-spirals because of that.

So it's important to "think positive" - but not in the cheesy, "positive thinking" way - rather, in adopting a positive, desirable vision for your life as a feeling. (A bit like old Neville Goddard's idea.)

Thank you very, very much for this reply. I feel you've given me an outline to something huge and obviously life-changing. I'm interested in what you have said, and am going to probably study this comment for quite a while. If what you are claiming is true, I want to use it for love and light and the unification of awareness with the best possible experience for it, which I currently imagine to be a really kickass story. Perhaps I am naive in thinking this way, but it is how I feel, and normally I'd say I can't change that - but I suppose according to you I can. Still, there are facets of this narrative I'd like to explore. There is a woman... I have a feeling things will start to get really, well, unpredictable, when I finally encounter her again. I suppose I'm preparing myself for that. Again, thank you for taking the time to explain all this to me, I truly appreciate you sharing your knowledge. It's nice to be able to discuss concepts that most would deem insane or unrealistic. It makes me feel freer just by doing so.

Well, personal experience is the key - decide for yourself what is true for you. Take on other people's ideas and see what they add to your own understanding/knowing. Yeah, 'love and light', that's the way.

And remember you have to live the humdrum aspects of life as well as the more random/exciting/bizarre ones, while you are still in amongst it! :-)

Have fun - - -

POST: Why can’t the world’s greatest minds solve the mystery of consciousness? | Oliver Burkeman | Science

A1: I'm working on it, shmeesh, hold your horses.

A2: I'm working on my thesis at the moment, here is an early draft:

Haha, spectacular.

...

To Dennett’s opponents, he is simply denying the existence of something everyone knows for certain: their inner experience of sights, smells, emotions and the rest.

Part of the problem is maybe this idea of "inner experience". To me, all my experience appears in a conscious, aware space. So in a way, all of my experiences are inner - that chair over there, that thought over here. There's no separation. But I can't detect an outer in my experience, so really they aren't inner either. This is the background to all experience. Consciousness isn't a thing, it's a context. (Any thoughts I have about my-"self", George, also appear within that context. Which means those are just concepts and not the "real me".)

"To look for a real, substantive thing called consciousness, Dennett argues, is as silly as insisting that characters in novels, such as Sherlock Holmes or Harry Potter, must be made up of a peculiar substance named “fictoplasm”

Which is funny. But highlights the problem: those characters appear in my awareness too when I read about them. In other words, Sherlock Holmes and Harry Potter are made from consciousness. If consciousness is not a "thing", but rather the material from which experience is shaped, then it's either an error or a straw-man argument to dismiss consciousness by categorising it as such.

It’s like asserting that cancer doesn’t exist, then claiming you’ve cured cancer.

It's more like asserting that words and sentences don't exist, using words and sentences.

Well, it certainly doesn't help that our only means of expressing consciousness is mediated by language... a tool of consciousness.

Well, I guess... art? Art and the felt-sense.

But, yeah, as soon as we are using division or objects in our communication, we are already in trouble. How can something point to something that it is made from?

I've actually considered art before, but if you think about it, an artist can never paint anything that fully depicts his entire knowledge/understanding of art

I agree, but I think we can capture "meaning" in art, felt meaning. Sure, not the fundamental truth (because that is what the art is made from, not what it depicts), but it allows us a deeper connection than language.

. . .but as soon as we think about it, we begin to attach all of our comfortable symbols and concepts to the experience we're trying to describe, and we taint it in the process.

Yes, I think that's spot on. Even sitting quietly on our sofa, we can relax into this open feeling, but as soon as we think about it we "ripple the water" as it were. Direct perception and thinking occur in the same space, so to perceive clearly you have to let yourself settle - no forcing, no trying. That's why "there is no technique".

I'd be interested if this was also true for near death experiences...

Lots of them still seem very "content-based". Sometimes people feel peaceful, they often have a sense of a greater connected space, but it seems they are still having an object-based experience. Maybe there's a balance to be had between giving yourself to the experience, and holding back a bit. This might make the difference between dying and not, though...

It's a real shame that the Guardian article is so inaccurate.
I strongly recommend you read Consciousness Explained - it's a killer book and I think you'd have a great time with it.
In particular, Dennett does NOT claim that consciousness doesn't exist. What he's against is the Cartesian theatre model of consciousness, where a "little man" sits in your brain telling you what to do.

I did read it (about 10 years ago) and its "multiple drafts" model. It's a very enjoyable book actually; he's a smart guy with a nice style. As I recall, the problem with Dennett is actually that he's talking about content not consciousness.

It's quite a nice model for describing the formation of the apparent world as experienced in one's first-person "aware space". In fact, it's pretty close to the idea that our experience is an "ongoing dream 'inspired by' the senses". (The nature and location of "the senses" is another matter.)

But because he's determined to infer what consciousness is from that, he ends up clashing; just as he does when he confuses directed introspection with thinking-about, and therefore sees construction rather than observation. (He really implicitly assumes that we can only apprehend the content or patterns, but this is not true.)

In any other area, it would be a good approach: See what is there, then derive the terms from that. In this special area though, "what is there" and the thing being "explained" (consciousness) are the same thing and therefore outside of your examination, because it is that which all examinations are also made from. Which means in some ways that having a theory about consciousness is meaningless. One can only have theories about patterns within consciousness; that which awareness is aware of, as and within itself. In fact, I think this is exactly true. Now, it's been a while since I read him, so maybe I am misrepresenting!

POST: What are some of your "out there", unconventional thoughts about this reality and your own consciousness?

This life is a dream and each of us is a small fraction of the dreamer. Anything is possible. Nothing is forbidden. But what we do to each other, we do to ourselves.

I like this efficient way of saying it. Do you see yourself as the dreamer?

Hahaha my ego wishes! No, I think we are literally one God-soul, lost within itself.

Yeah, "Phwahaha, you are all my obedient puppets now!" :-)

Doesn't that mean you are the dream character and the dreamer and the dream environment? Meaning "duck_amuck" is a character who borrows his power from the dream, as it were, but he's still the dream and the dreamer too - just as /u/duck_amuck borrows his power from Reddit.

Actually, I quite like that idea, and it fits experience a bit:

Characters borrow their power, so they can only "submit requests" for what they want to do to the larger dream, hoping that the dream will then move them as requested. All the while, of course, they are actually the larger dream all along, pretending they have to ask...?

Here's a picture of duck_amuck hanging out with a chickeny pal, pretending to be separate.

EDIT: Better: They are the larger dream, having confused themselves into thinking they are the character.

Lol to the pic.
But yeah, something like that... Ego is the character. Self is the dreamer. Self has unlimited power, but the character is the one driving the story within its limited scope/means/belief systems.

Self-ego-character, sounds about right. "Big Self, Little Self". Would make a good title for a children's esoteric television show.

Another way is to rebrand this. Self is the universe. Ego is just a bit of that universe. What we call "you" is just the sphere of attention, perimeter of experience we are currently maintaining. We think that we are "ego" when we localise on the region of body-space where selfish thoughts seem to arise (typically, towards the rear of the head); we think we are the universe when we dissolve the perimeter; in-between and we think we make "connections" and have non-local paranormal powers.

Idk what in your post made me think of it, but it's too bad there's not a legit mystery school teaching today... The realization of consciousness and the tools to work with it should be available to everyone.

Yes. There are lots of 'cult-type' efforts and 'self-help' arrangements, but there's nothing legitimate. In school, we don't even teach the history of religions and beliefs/worldviews anymore (as opposed to the content). I am very interested in seeing insights brought into modern, accessible language, together with investigative approaches ('exercises' without any nonsense) a person can use to discover themselves and the world. People like Rupert Spira attempt this to some extent, but somehow it doesn't cover the whole subject (life!) for me.

POST: Just a reminder: There's nowhere to run.

[POST]

:D

[END OF...POST?]

:-/

A1: When you can fly, there is no need to run.

A2: When you can exist in all places at once, there is no need to fly.

A1: When you are both nothing and everything, there is no need to exist in all places at once.

A2: When you simply are, there is no need.