There is no external world...

[User names must be unique]

Describe it.

One person can't describe it, it's collaborative effort of multiple perspectives of other humans who I can assume are independent observers based on the fact they posses knowledge I didn't/couldn't have known.

Yes I suppose there's always the chance they're truman show style npc's but that would mean I am unique or special in someway that seems extremely doubtful.

 

[RMQualtrough]

Awareness, wholeness, oneness, or we could call it consciousness, takes form as everything that appears. Consciousness is not some blank empty slate behind everything. ~ David Loy



Okay, so we’re definitely at the Subject - Object Illusion now, what’s your take on this then?

Spoiler: This is my notes on that particular belief.

Objects are created in your mind, from perceived ideas, notions, or concepts which in turn is just consciousness. Seeing is just thinking of an imagined reality, believing we are experiencing the world; when you’re just experiencing what you’ve experienced itself, objectless consciousness. If objects are objectively real, you can’t say that consciousness is beyond/prior to time/space. These are just spatio, and temporal concepts with no independent/singular application from time and space

.

David Loy is describing the Tao there, which is nothing+everything. The awareness you describe is the empty nothing portion, and it manifests as the something which is the appearance of dualism. You know this I think but I am responding to that anyway.

Do you want my own way of viewing this?

I think the appearance of dualism exists by absolute necessity, and in absolute total literal nothingness it is impossible for things to not manifest. For to force nothing to remain as nothing would be imposing a boundary or limit, but in nothingness there can be no such thing as boundaries or limits because if there were it would not be absolute nothing.

Consciousness is something which happens where there is interaction. Often people refer to fundamental reality as consciousness. I think this is because it is easier to think about and find within ourselves. But by exploring consciousness at a point we find it too is empty... What it really is, is closer to consciousness under general anaesthesia, in that it only happens when experience happens.

When experience happens, nothing plays the role of the experiencer, while the somethings are of course the experienced. That extends even to thought...

Call it "I" and watch how what it is retreats immediately behind that thought. For a thought is observed, and what it is, is the observer. So it isn't the "I" thought but what is behind that thought.

 

[johnsinslot]

Phones and computers appear in mind.

In your perspective, remember I’m not directly denying/countering you, I’m just posing questions.

If you choose to say some illusory things should be considered real, then you may well say the phone and computer are real.

Spoiler: This is a loooong one

Kind of Dualistic in approach for what I thought was a very Nondualistic post.
Via Subject - Object Illusion, your Mind claims, everything else, behind us all is abstract nothingness, or Not Two.
How about:
Time & Space do not objectively exist.
If you believe that Time & Space are objectively out there. You must then come to terms with Objects being capable of viewing other Objects, which are only Subjects. Time can’t exist objectively, because you cannot point me to an event in time, only an event during our ever moving present. Though we enter Fatalism - Presentism/Eternalism discussion tangents so moving on.
The typical person sees themself as an Object with cognizance/consciousness/mind, whichever you prefer.
The criticism to what you, I believe is Subjective Idealism, refer to if everything is just in the mind, things would stop existing when not perceived “fire to ashes.” this proved that when asleep, not seeing it, perceiving it, it still is a true aspect of the material world. Time still passes, space still Is, the only answer would be the claim of a God(s) perception keeping the Tree a Tree while in the forest by itself . If God is always watching, this Idealism would be unnecessary, and a waste of time, You can’t ask someone else to prove an imperceptible though,
The borders of perception are potentially set by beliefs and thereby someone not believing S.Idealism could make it impossible for them to see proof for it.

It’s all a fucky topic, but always fun to get into.

 

[RMQualtrough]

One person can't describe it, it's collaborative effort of multiple perspectives of other humans who I can assume are independent observers based on the fact they posses knowledge I didn't/couldn't have known.

Yes I suppose there's always the chance they're truman show style npc's but that would mean I am unique or special in someway that seems extremely doubtful.

The point of the question is that as soon as you say it is "like" anything, you are introducing perceptual experience which cannot be out there, because you would need to remove the perceptual element of the thing to find what is actually out there.

If it can't possibly be "like" anything at all, because anything it could possibly be "like" is a perception, then it can only be like the singular and sole thing which cannot possibly be perceived: Absolutely nothingness.

When saying there is an objective world, from that claim you must be able to state what you think IS out there.

We can take a TV monitor and you could stick a tape measure across it and it says 42". Smoke some good shit and perhaps the TV suddenly appears twice as wide or twice as narrow. But you see the problem is, the measuring device itself is part OF the material world that you are now perceiving as wider or narrower, and as such it shrinks or expands WITH your perception. It still says the TV is 42" even though it appears twice as narrow or w.e., rendering the measuring device useless for telling us what it is actually like out there. If both models of what is out there work as they can be verified to, then there is no way to say my TV and the tape measure isn't actually twice as wide (or w.e.) in actuality.

We have to conceive of what it would look like if we exited our mind and saw it AS IT REALLY IS. Which cannot be done, because even if we left our mind, to see what the TV really looks like invokes "SEEING" which is PERCEPTION.

 

[johnsinslot]

David Loy is describing the Tao there, which is nothing+everything. The awareness you describe is the empty nothing portion, and it manifests as the something which is the appearance of dualism. You know this I think but I am responding to that anyway.

Yea, it is but Taoism has the concept of that WWW word I forget which I think literally meant, “action of nonaction,” or something similar, basically forgetting the external/not perceiving it:
When you stop being yourself, and become one with the activity at hand.
Muscle memory, a person “in the zone,” etc, or a simplified as Subject - Object Nonduality/Nondual Thinking.

 

[Bad Gateway]

 

[RMQualtrough]

Yes, I was going to counter argue with my own life at the risk of power leveling:

1. A baby waking up laughing

But @RMQualtrough would never respond to my replies and was selective.

I have no idea what you are talking about since you think I'm some guy who said fetuses hate life, hence I didn't reply.

 

[johnsinslot]

The point of the question is that as soon as you say it is "like" anything, you are introducing perceptual experience which cannot be out there, because you would need to remove the perceptual element of the thing to find what is actually out there.

I think my favorite explaining of the Consciousness over all else is;
“There is no external world beyond our perceptions. There is only consciousness. What this attempts to explain is the mechanism whereby this subjectivity manifest itself into this seemingly real world of objects and subjects”
This subjectivity is manifested via the conditioning of decades, upon thousands of years of viewing in an Objective way, rather than Subjective
The claim that this is all built upon via subjective perception is attacked upon the basis that Trees don’t disappear in the middle of nowhere, a fire burns out at night, your asleep, yet your bed stays under you. You’re in the shower, yet your parents don’t disappear, etc etc.
It begs too many questions upon a higher power, and from what little I do know, a higher power specific isn’t a big topic/notion in Monism/Subjective Idealism, though I could be wrong.

 

[RMQualtrough]

In your perspective, remember I’m not directly denying/countering you, I’m just posing questions.

Spoiler: This is a loooong one

Kind of Dualistic in approach for what I thought was a very Nondualistic post.
Via Subject - Object Illusion, your Mind claims, everything else, behind us all is abstract nothingness, or Not Two.
How about:
Time & Space do not objectively exist.
If you believe that Time & Space are objectively out there. You must then come to terms with Objects being capable of viewing other Objects, which are only Subjects. Time can’t exist objectively, because you cannot point me to an event in time, only an event during our ever moving present. Though we enter Fatalism - Presentism/Eternalism discussion tangents so moving on.
The typical person sees themself as an Object with cognizance/consciousness/mind, whichever you prefer.
The criticism to what you, I believe is Subjective Idealism, refer to if everything is just in the mind, things would stop existing when not perceived “fire to ashes.” this proved that when asleep, not seeing it, perceiving it, it still is a true aspect of the material world. Time still passes, space still Is, the only answer would be the claim of a God(s) perception keeping the Tree a Tree while in the forest by itself . If God is always watching, this Idealism would be unnecessary, and a waste of time, You can’t ask someone else to prove an imperceptible though,
The borders of perception are potentially set by beliefs and thereby someone not believing S.Idealism could make it impossible for them to see proof for it.

It’s all a fucky topic, but always fun to get into.

Consciousness is immaterial and as such is something without a physical spatial boundary. That is, consciousness has a spatial dimension no more than the emotion of love does. There is no way to bust out a ruler and say "yep, love is 50cm x 20cm.

So your sense of consciousness being like an object with a physical dimension, like say a box shape behind your eyes, cannot possibly be accurate because like love it is not physical.

Rather, it conforms to the shape of your body by illusion of the brain, because this is critical to survival. If you don't know where you end and other begins, you could not function or survive and your genes would not be replicated.

Induce an out of body experience, and the subject object divide collapses and rather than feeling confined to your body, you experience it as its boundless self, since it is immaterial like happiness of sadness.

 

[johnsinslot]

Consciousness is immaterial and as such is something without a physical spatial boundary. That is, consciousness has a spatial dimension no more than the emotion of love does. There is no way to bust out a ruler and say "yep, love is 50cm x 20cm.

So your sense of consciousness being like an object with a physical dimension, like say a box shape behind your eyes, cannot possibly be accurate because like love it is not physical.

Rather, it conforms to the shape of your body by illusion of the brain, because this is critical to survival. If you don't know where you end and other begins, you could not function or survive and your genes would not be replicated.

Induce an out of body experience, and the subject object divide collapses and rather than feeling confined to your body, you experience it as its boundless self, since it is immaterial like happiness of sadness.

Gorän explains Perception Veil as such:
“…the world as it appears to us is not the actual world – it is an experiential representation of the world. And this representation, this constantly refreshed virtual depiction of ourselves and the world around us, is all that we can ever encounter…”
Basically, you cannot make the content of your world, anything other than what the content of your consciousness is.
“But objects obviously exist, they’re right here.”
The way we experience them, or representation of them is entirely subjective in relation to the individual, like those old mind tricks they had in grade school.

The issue is that this brings wild claims to tail, someone comes to you and says they seen a Dragon, they’re crazy, they say they saw a Rainbow, oh cool.
When we close our eyes, life doesn’t cease outside of us, what is real? what is illusion? do you base it entirely on personal subjective perception?
We can separate dreams, and reality, but not illusions of existence?
If we all are looking at this KF site, it must exist, we can’t all perceive the same personally subjective idea of KF.
If one person claims otherwise, it’s up to them to prove their side.
If everything is unreal, so must be the mind/conscious, which renders everything we’ve said as moot, and unimportant then?

 

[johnsinslot]

Which cannot be done, because even if we left our mind, to see what the TV really looks like invokes "SEEING" which is PERCEPTION.

Seer vs Seen then, right?
Seer & Seen being opposites, the Seer sees a lot of things, unchanging being the mind.
& The Seen doesn’t stop changing; Before your brain retrieves the correlated names to the things you are looking at, you have no idea what you’re seeing.

 

[RMQualtrough]

I think my favorite explaining of the Consciousness over all else is;
“There is no external world beyond our perceptions. There is only consciousness. What this attempts to explain is the mechanism whereby this subjectivity manifest itself into this seemingly real world of objects and subjects”
This subjectivity is manifested via the conditioning of decades, upon thousands of years of viewing in an Objective way, rather than Subjective
The claim that this is all built upon via subjective perception is attacked upon the basis that Trees don’t disappear in the middle of nowhere, a fire burns out at night, your asleep, yet your bed stays under you. You’re in the shower, yet your parents don’t disappear, etc etc.
It begs too many questions upon a higher power, and from what little I do know, a higher power specific isn’t a big topic/notion in Monism/Subjective Idealism, though I could be wrong.

The word God (higher power) is very frequently used albeit we do not mean anything like the God of Abraham. In the same sense that EVERYONE believes in God so long as they believe there exists a source of all things.

Brahman is consciousness without attribute. The Tao is "unspeakable" (really it is infinite nothing/something). Nirvana or whatever means "extinguishing" if I remember right. The topic of Nothingness is crucial in Buddhism, and especially important to me, because I firmly believe that nothing is the foundation of all existence... And it is quite obvious actually, when I consider, if you empty EVERYTHING from existence, what is left? Nothing. What is the only thing that does not require a cause? Nothing.

Nothing is the uncaused cause! Any something creates an infinite regress. Nothing solves all. And the lack of limits logical laws and boundaries in nothingness is the mechanism by which it manifests as something.

There is a book called God is Nothingness which I enjoyed.

Trees don't disappear but there is no such thing as a tree separated from perception. Let me explain: When a tree falls and nobody is around to hear it, does it make a sound. NO! It CAN'T. It makes soundwaves we say, and those bounce off but there is no "thwomp", because the sound of it falling ("thwomp") is dependent upon observation.

There is nothing to a tree but perception. Tree is something Brahman or nothingness or w.e. you call it is manifesting as.

 

[johnsinslot]

Brahman is consciousness without attribute

Brahman is also the many faces of Duality, the nondual, non illusion, reality as a concrete universe, or Nakamura. So yea, basically, I agree there.

Nothing being the uncaused cause is also true, but there’s also the Philosophy that God is the uncaused cause. Like you said about the Book you mentioned, if Nothingness is uncaused, God must be Nothingness. The cause, that was never given a cause to exist, because it is Eternal. I just feel this topic is heavy on the Nonduality aspect, and that’s why I got involved tbh. I’ve enjoyed this conversation not going to lie, very thought provoking.

 

[RMQualtrough]

Gorän explains Perception Veil as such:
“…the world as it appears to us is not the actual world – it is an experiential representation of the world. And this representation, this constantly refreshed virtual depiction of ourselves and the world around us, is all that we can ever encounter…”
Basically, you cannot make the content of your world, anything other than what the content of your consciousness is.
“But objects obviously exist, they’re right here.”
The way we experience them, or representation of them is entirely subjective in relation to the individual, like those old mind tricks they had in grade school.

The issue is that this brings wild claims to tail, someone comes to you and says they seen a Dragon, they’re crazy, they say they saw a Rainbow, oh cool.
When we close our eyes, life doesn’t cease outside of us, what is real? what is illusion? do you base it entirely on personal subjective perception?
We can separate dreams, and reality, but not illusions of existence?
If we all are looking at this KF site, it must exist, we can’t all perceive the same personally subjective idea of KF.
If one person claims otherwise, it’s up to them to prove their side.
If everything is unreal, so must be the mind/conscious, which renders everything we’ve said as moot, and unimportant then?

Envision dreams, how those work. In THIS reality we are not the dreamer, we are the dreamED. Right? So... Consider a dream you are having, the laws and rules of a dream are very versatile and unfixed, however, whatever is localized inside the dream does adhere to whichever laws are imposed upon that dream.

So if in the dream it is the case that saying "BOO" causes rain to happen, then if you said BOO rain would fall.

It is hard to use as an anaolgy because there are not very stringent rules placed upon dreams.

But take it up a level and imagine now that the universe is a dream. Unlike the dreams we have, the laws are very strict and unchanging. There is gravity, time, etc. We the characters are localized inside this "material-dream". In this material dream universe there are no such thing as dragons. You cannot fly. Etc. Because we are part OF the dream and adhere to its rules.

We cannot change them or bend them. I can explain why.

But if someone says they saw a dragon. I cannot deny they had a perception of the appearance of a dragon. But they are trying to imply that it happened inside the material-universe-dream where such things, by consensus, do not exist.

Hopefully that makes sense.

 

[Fester Chavez]

We cannot change them or bend them. I can explain why.

But if someone says they saw a dragon. I cannot deny they had a perception of the appearance of a dragon. But they are trying to imply that it happened inside the material-universe-dream where such things, by consensus, do not exist.

Hopefully that makes sense.

By using the term "consensus" aren't you admitting this material-universe-dream is external to you, and therefore indistinguishable from the concept of an "external world"?

 

[General Tug Boat]

I look at it as the human brain is like a reciever, essentially converts the stimuli that our nervous system recieves into usable information. It's just more or so on how not only your stimuli has neurologically developed in response to the environment, but also through the rigorous course of our evolutionary tract, how you respond to it. Reality in itself is subjective and if anything I find it is more likely we are a universal consciousness that exists in the cloud. That because of the fundamental limits of the universe can only inherently exist in one reference frame at a time. Though it can coexist, where essentially the God mind is just an inherent property of all of nature.

It just isn't something that we necessarily measure, because arrangements of information is like RAM. It's only in a temporary state, but like the fundamental property all of matter shares it cannot be created or destroyed, only rearranged. Time is a way of quantitatively measure displacement of information, but lacks the attribute of the actual assembly, it's up to our brains to be able to do the work in that regard.

Cause and effect are real, not that nothing exists, it just that our receptors filter out the unnecessary data that is like junk, because it isn't significant to the survival of the organism. All life shares the same instinct, just has different levels of being able to interpret the stimuli.

Reality is what you make it, have fun with it, and don't take it too seriously.

 

[RMQualtrough]

By using the term "consensus" aren't you admitting this material-universe-dream is external to you, and therefore indistinguishable from the concept of an "external world"?

It depends which "you" is being referred to. The human you are talking to right now is part OF the "external world" you see?

We are part OF the dream.

Envision for a moment that this is all a dream in God's mind. We the characters localized inside this thing called the universe, are dreamed things. Indeed our bodies are made OF the universe, of matter. We arise from it. We do not come "into" it.

It is about finding what exists objectively at the absolute level, which is above and beyond what is objectively true in this dream.

So absolute I am meaning, that even if there were a creator God, or this was a simulation on a computer, it would be the origin of THAT too. We are going right to the source. And I am saying that at the source, there is no such thing as other. It is total nonduality.

When nonduality is experienced by a human, which is our finite selves, the experience is equivalent to nothing. When we go under general anaesthesia, the nothing in between is total absolute nonduality. Because the monent you experience ANYTHING, you are creating experienceD and experienceR. There is no experiencer without experienced. There is just nothing. And that is fundamental absolute reality.

From our finite selves, there is an illusion of the external world like a dream, but there is nothing actually out there beyond mind. I wrote a piece on Reddit proving this mathematically. But logically it can be shown too, since an object is nothing but what it is perceived to be. It is possible to experience various models of this "external world" and all function as expected like the example of the stretching or shrinking TV screen and tape measure. When multiple models of the world work, there is no way to be able to determine which is right or wrong.

A space alien might perceive the color red as blue. But if both taught "this is what red looks like" when seeing that specific wavelength of light, we would agree "hey look there's red". In that very simplified version of the issue, we see that there is no way to say whether upon exiting the mind the thing is actually red or blue.

Consider for a moment if you were tasked to draw the room around you as it IS rather than as it appears, how would you begin? Color is immediately out. We might instead choose to draw some squiggles to represent a wave of light (color). But a wave is still form, you are still drawing a shape which requires seeing and perception.

It gets more interesting and obvious with spatial dimensions, though, because that is where we can most easily see our measuring tools are meaningless to tell us what is really there, because they too are subject to perception. And thus a person could see something as being much different in size while the measuring tool being a material object alters size to reflect the perception, while the numerical figure remains the same. And then we can ask "what exactly IS a 30cm, when removed from perception". Am I making sense?

 

[Fester Chavez]

It depends which "you" is being referred to. The human you are talking to right now is part OF the "external world" you see?

We are part OF the dream.

I agree, everything in this universe is made of the same basic stuff at the lowest level (probably), but I don't see how that meaningfully integrates a consciousness with the reality it's parts were made from.
Combinations of parts can have attributes that don't exist in any of the individual parts, and this suggests to me that combinations of parts of the universe can meaningfully separate it from the rest of the universe when looking at certain attributes. It could perhaps be the case, that the combination of universe parts that creates a perceptive consciousness separates the universe into observed and observer, and experienced and experiencer. When the consciousness dies, it doesn't rejoin the universe; it ceases to exist-the elevated attributes it obtained due to its pattern fall back to the background levels of the universe.

 

[johnsinslot]

the laws and rules of a dream are very versatile and unfixed

But take it up a level and imagine now that the universe is a dream. Unlike the dreams we have, the laws are very strict and unchanging. There is gravity, time, etc.

First off, this is simply me playing Advocate, for the sake of Philosophy.
While I softly agree with some of what I’ll say, do not take it all as my 100% factual belief.

---

---

Spoiler: A lotta text, open at risk.

Okay, so now we’ve broached Concepts for sure, Concepts which usually stand by reason as the ‘building blocks’ of the Universe.
All a Concept technically is, would be an idea that we apply to a certain “real logic,” for lack of better terms:
Gravity, Time, Light, Language, Knowledge, Truth, etc.
The issue is, by acknowledging these Concepts are logical in Philosophy, not Mental, which would inherently harm the argument perpetrated.
You could argue that they’re just words that we assign “meaningless meaning” towards, the issue remains that a Concept is technically Empirical, the direct opponent of Philosophical.
The only argument I’m aware of would be that Concepts point to direct experience, we simply cannot conceptualize something that isn’t within our reasonable mental capacity.
That could be an objective claim, but it would be made from a subjective ground.
& It would need a study group consensus to reasonably test it.
With that being said, by virtue of it any Concept thought of, or made “law” by man, is a Concept we’ve experienced.
“But I can imagine the Concept of a Dragon, or even a 40 foot tall Ape named King Kong!”
Yes, but that would be due to their normal conceptual make up, colors, shapes, etc.
We couldn’t conceptualize what a 9th dimensional hexagon looks like, or even a 4th dimensional Hyper?cube, because it’s not within the realm of plausibility to us.

So, while we may not be able to say what an External Reality would be, we can definitely say what it isn’t, due to these Laws, Concepts you say even exist in the dream like illusion of reality we stay in.
Space existing (in the terms of my sophism.) would imply that Space is the canvas we draw the illusions of Concepts upon.
Space is still apart of the Consciousness within this segment, but it’s only the Canvas we draw upon, and as such is subjective to our Reality/Experience.
Could Space be independent of us? Which would basically ask is Soce physical? Throwing aside my personal opinion, the argument I’m advocating is a big no as well, mainly due to our limited experience.
See how experience is the big advocate in this argument?
If Space was independent of our experience, it would be Physical, which would make Space objective, existing in the External/Material World. How could we describe an item, of that which is inexperiencable though,
“But just because we can’t imagine it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.”
Meh, well it does kinda, you can’t say you imagine nothing at all, because you can’t. The/Your (not you specifically.) argument is that you’re imagining Nothing, which is complete opposite of Existence.
Time also doesn’t exist, “but why?! Are you retarded?!”
All Time is, would be a way to relate two separate events, or Experiences. You can’t conceive the future, you can’t conceive an events location in the past, only the experience it gave. Even if Time was objective we couldn’t tell the place an event that’s already happened, along the “span of Time” because it’s not an interactive Concept physically. & Any sort of mathematical representation of Time/Space can only do so, because they are assuming that Time/Space is objective to everything in relations due to Einstein I believe.


Everyone’s individual experience, creates their subjective Time, along a supposed Spatial “stream/linear set” of experiences, which only means that what happens now, has absolutely zero effecting cause to the past, there’s. no. connection

.

TL/DR: Life is subjective, illusion based, and nothing is real, you’ll die, ascend consciousness if lucky, or be stuck in some terrifying never ending cycle.
Always strive for Brahman though, as that’s the Eternity, the Many Faces, and the Nonduality, the God that is Nothing, the Nothing that is God.

This isn’t me claiming these are all true, or all false. Dualism sucks, there’s no such thing as ONLY two Truth Values, that’s just a conditioned route of belief. Fallacious in nature as a False Dilemma,
True or False is in nature, logically incorrect, Many-Valued Logic’s, while Non-Classical also exist, which is a good

Spoiler: example right here

Causal force of future verbs can be deterministic or probabilistic. The proposition: “If you let go of that rock, it will fall” expresses the speaker’s belief that there is no possibility that things might turn out otherwise [Rhoda, Boyd, & Belt 2006, 443]. The expressed probability contained in the speaker’s belief is 1. But, if a mother warns her child by saying: “Don’t go out without your jacket or you will catch a cold” it is not the causal inevitability which she means but only probability, which is less than 1 but greater than 0.

Which uses Rational-Choice Theory, or when we use “rational calculations” to make “rational choices” that have higher chances to achieve outcomes that we aligned with our own personal objectives, or Subjective Experience.


That’s all I got left in me I think as an Advocate, instead of speaking normally.

 

[johnsinslot]

Aghhh, my head is starting the headache.