The Myth of Objective Reality

[southflorida]

If all of our suffering is a consequence of self-survival, eliminating self-survival will lead to a state of no-suffering.

Before looking into being free of self-survival, we need to fully experience this force in action, dominating our mind and perceptions.

But like a fish in water, it is hard for us to isolate and study the matter when everything we think, feel, and perceive is our self surviving.

We need a contrast so that we can better appreciate this activity as it takes place, and more clearly see it at work in our everyday experiences.

So how can we recognize this core operating principle in the day-to-day minutia that fill our lives? It’s easy.

Recall the deepest sense of inner freedom that you’ve ever had—some time when you felt at peace and free from any stress, reactions, desires, fears, judgments, or any feeling that you must be some way or do something. Sit for a moment and produce a sense of emptiness, freedom, non-attachment, stillness, and a feeling of inner peace.

Maybe you have been on a vacation where you simply got lost in the moment and forgot about your daily suffering and struggle in relation to your moment-to-moment self survival. Or some other memory where you were present, fully here-and-now, instead of constantly thinking about the past or the future.

Now, compare this sense to your daily experience.

Throughout your day, what in your experience isn’t simply free and at rest? Usually a great deal—actually, it may well be all of it.

This should reveal just how forcefully your self-concerns impose themselves on everything you do, think, and feel. Their effect can be subtle, but creating a sense of inner peace will provide a useful contrast with which to more clearly recognize your self-survival at work.

In order to recognize self-survival dominating your experience, you simply have to notice that everything you encounter—even your own thoughts and imagination—has an effect on you.

 

[mrcreosote]

"Me standing between the railroad tracks at 8:04 and waiting for the 8:05 train will all happen inside my mind, not DIRECTLY as you and a few others believe and assume."

Not to put too finer a point on this statement...

This is pure unadulterated sophistry.
Better known in the vernacular as bullshit.
What undoubtedly will happen will definitely be in your mind...
Along with your face and skull.
It's called physics.
Why pretend otherwise? What's the point?

Still waiting for that field report. Bold claims require bold experiments.

 

[offthehook]

If it is working out for you, then okay. But, this pretending and mis-representing yourself, in the long-term leads to suffering and struggle.

Emptiness, self-doubt, feeling trapped....all forms of suffering!

...ever experienced these? Sure Or should I ask has there been a day, where these haven't been experienced? Sure.
But it's easy to recognise these state's of mind, become aware of it and move on.
Right now I'm in a similar process with the 'beeing lost feeling' as well> Recognition> Awareness> Moving on> Getting larger.

And what about the struggle necessary to manipulate the circumstances, yourself, and other people in order to eliminate the suffering from experiencing emptiness, self-doubt, feeling trapped? It is not as much a suffering as it is an observation. Interesting stuff actually, not thàt much negatively loaded but definatly something to get a hold on.

Maybe this strategy is not so effective?
I ain't got no strategy, lol, stuff just happens while my conscience is guiding me.

 

[southflorida]

"Me standing between the railroad tracks at 8:04 and waiting for the 8:05 train will all happen inside my mind, not DIRECTLY as you and a few others believe and assume."

Not to put too finer a point on this statement...

This is pure unadulterated sophistry.
Better known in the vernacular as bullshit.
What undoubtedly will happen will definitely be in your mind...
Along with your face and skull.
It's called physics.
Why pretend otherwise? What's the point?

Still waiting for that field report. Bold claims require bold experiments.

I'm saying that all these things that will happen will be secondary.

What is there as the "primary" reality is not-known.

Maybe there are atoms, electrons, or some other substance flying around and attaching itself to itself...who knows?

We, as humans, only have our in-direct perceptive organs that allow us to perceive secondary processes inside of our minds, inside of our imaginations.

Our self-mind interprets DATA received through the nerve-endings.

What this data IS nobody actually knows. There are a lot of theories, but in reality it is simply not-known.

The train will hit a human body and might even kill the human that it hits, but this experience will occur in the self-minds of the humans that will perceive this occuring.

What occurs in the fundamental reality, the primary reality is not-known.

You know why this is so difficult to grasp?

Because our perceptions are so familiar, and the only ones we’ve got.

This is why what we perceive seems to "be" reality.

But, it is not. It is an interpretation of something not known.

Something that is more primary than the secondary interpretation provide to us by our mind.

 

[offthehook]

"Me standing between the railroad tracks at 8:04 and waiting for the 8:05 train will all happen inside my mind, not DIRECTLY as you and a few others believe and assume."

Not to put too finer a point on this statement...

This is pure unadulterated sophistry.
Better known in the vernacular as bullshit.
What undoubtedly will happen will definitely be in your mind...
Along with your face and skull.
It's called physics.
Why pretend otherwise? What's the point?

Still waiting for that field report. Bold claims require bold experiments.

I once actually did a similar experiment but got surprised by the outcome...
I figured: All is in my head, so well, lets stop all Terrestial suffering by just splitting it in two halfes.
Layed myself down on a concrete floor and started banging my head with all power I had backwards down on the floor.
Thing I noticed was, no matter how convincingly I tried breaking my head, I could not get it to split or get out of existence from it.
These were some massive blows, and the story happened some 30 odd years ago.

I suppose there must be many having had the same mindset whilst waiting for your 8:05 train Mr Creosote. Some who even survived like 2 women I know that had jumped from some very tall buildings. ^^
From the succeeding, now 'out of existence ones' point of view, all is now at peace and their experiment confirmed positive.
What they left is just us here reasoning this all to be it.

 

[southflorida]

...that experiment is definitely off the hook

 

[offthehook]

Flmao, Thanks man, I take it as a compliment!

Recall the deepest sense of inner freedom that you’ve ever had—some time when you felt at peace and free from any stress, reactions, desires, fears, judgments, or any feeling that you must be some way or do something. Sit for a moment and produce a sense of emptiness, freedom, non-attachment, stillness, and a feeling of inner peace.
Funny you mention this. The state of mind here described I felt mostly while laying on my 'meditation rock' in the forest whilst beeing super high on shrooms.
Then, I only experienced strong fysical laughter while spiritually no flying fuck was given. If someone would have killed me in that mindset I would have experienced it all as just a bloody joke.


In order to recognize self-survival dominating your experience, you simply have to notice that everything you encounter—even your own thoughts and imagination—has an effect on you.

Sure does, and it also should. It's the thing that keeps us from termination as an individual or species.
Much is gained when beeing aware of it for sure.
It might help enabling one getting selective at eleminating certain unwanted states of mind.
At some point, what at first tends extending our survival might in actually lead to our termination.
(Eg, Urge to drive a car to earn a living, whilst ending up in a lethal accident ^^ Bit like the 'Darwin awards' thingy, lol)

 

[BushyOldGrower]

Interesting as I have always wondered if this was all real.

You could all just be part of my dream.

Or we could all just be part of your dream but I think it's bigger than that.

We can't say we know what reality is but our perceptions of it aren't limited like the animals.

Easy to say that there is no reality but I doubt that. If there is no reality it just makes no sense to me.

We are unreal really?

 

[barnyard]

"The train will hit a human body and might even kill the human that it hits, but this experience will occur in the self-minds of the humans that will perceive this occuring."

No, the dude really got hit by the train, we're not just imagining it. The event didn't just occur in our minds. What you're espousing here is called SOLIPSISM southflorida.

Reality is SOCIALLY MEDIATED and occurs through the DIALECTIC INTERACTION of our PERCEPTS and CONCEPTS. No human beans are not the measure of all. We're just another animal on the planet that happens to be adept at using symbols and tools.

Your position is that people should be omniscient which is total non-sense and fundamentally arrogant, IMO.

 

[offthehook]

@ Barnyard. When you're out of existence you'll be pretty omniscient though. Noone left to care it beeing arrogant or not.

Hence, my position would be that inbetween life and death you'll become omnicient. Our offsprings human genome however remains programmed on an atomic level that's bound by laws of fysics.

 

[BushyOldGrower]

When we appear to die we enter Nirvana which is an out of body state.

I once had an out of body experience at age fifteen and it changed me because I had many profound insights when this happened. It changed me for the better because I knew a lot of things I didn't think I knew.

Perhaps we know all the things we have learned over so many lives but forgotten in each new incarnation. If you knew yourself you would know these things so the reality of ourselves is the thing we need to understand to have proper perspective.

We change like the many universes. Buddhism explains many difficult concepts so if this interests you then I suggest you visit the Chanting Growers Group thread.

I am still trying to make sense of everything but it takes time to absorb and live the truth.

 

[trichrider]

what then is 'imagination'?

is imagination real?

am i imagining the voice in my head?

and why is the voice in my head not my own?

should i really listen to it? even if it is delusional?

i am electric/chemical creature manifest in flesh, my being infinite, my body not. i was getting comfortable wearing this suit. now it no longer belongs to me...

positive chases negative in an endless dance of which we will eventually tire, and when it is said and done, we each will fade to background noise when confronted with the all.

man knows so little, and now apparantly less.

 

[southflorida]

@offthehook: interesting story about meditating on that rock while on shrooms, I had a few amazing experiences while on large doses of LSD in the Arizona desert. Watched for hours as millions of aliens landed in thousands of alien ships and ran around doing shit.

By the way, self-survival is what our perceptions have been designed for, and survival IS all we ever do on a moment-to-moment basis. There is really nothing outside of it. Our self-mind has been designed for this, and it has been doing an okay job over the millenia.

Somewhere a 3 out of ten stars.

But, we must not forget, that NO MATTER what we do and as hard as we try to survive, in the end we WON'T.

We are running in a wheel, like a rat chasing an invisible cheese, and eventually we die in this wheel without ever getting the cheese and tasting it.

All the while we could have been simply happy with what IS, and didn't have to run anywhere. We could have been eating the REAL CHEESE that is plentiful right here and now in this present moment.

 

[offthehook]

Thats where this book is mostly about. I mentioned the link earlyer and is written in a very simple language: Truthcontest.com

 

[southflorida]

Interesting as I have always wondered if this was all real.

You could all just be part of my dream.

Or we could all just be part of your dream but I think it's bigger than that.

We can't say we know what reality is but our perceptions of it aren't limited like the animals.

Easy to say that there is no reality but I doubt that. If there is no reality it just makes no sense to me.

We are unreal really?

We are all a part of ONE BIG DREAM. We are elements of one structure. The fact that our perceptions are in-direct and we all basically perceive the same thing shows that we are inside of this experience all together.

It is not that we are NOT real, we are REAL, but the things that we perceive, they are in-direct.

Or to put it another way, their NATURE is different from what we perceive.

 

[southflorida]

"The train will hit a human body and might even kill the human that it hits, but this experience will occur in the self-minds of the humans that will perceive this occuring."

No, the dude really got hit by the train, we're not just imagining it. The event didn't just occur in our minds. What you're espousing here is called SOLIPSISM southflorida.

What I'm pointing at is actually a scientific fact.

Our perceptions are IN-DIRECT. We interpret DATA that is transferred to our self-mind. We don't perceive anything directly, and have no senses that can do that.

The DATA we're perceiving through our senses and interpreting through our self-mind is NOT-KNOWN.

Scientists are trying to argue that everything is made from atoms, some say there's nothing there. But, none of them want to come out and say the truth, that they just don't know the true nature of reality.

Reality is SOCIALLY MEDIATED and occurs through the DIALECTIC INTERACTION of our PERCEPTS and CONCEPTS. No human beings are not the measure of all. We're just another animal on the planet that happens to be adept at using symbols and tools.

Your position is that people should be omniscient which is total non-sense and fundamentally arrogant, IMO.

I never said any of these things, and your interpretations of what I said are simply incorrect.

My main point is simple: what we perceive is an in-direct interpretation of an unknown reality. This perception/interpretation is a secondary process, and NOT the primary reality that exists originally, authentically as itself.

Our awareness is provided with an image, a sound, a taste, etc, and it is a complete illusion, we are completely 100% imagining it in our mind.

 

[southflorida]

When we appear to die we enter Nirvana which is an out of body state.

I once had an out of body experience at age fifteen and it changed me because I had many profound insights when this happened. It changed me for the better because I knew a lot of things I didn't think I knew.

Perhaps we know all the things we have learned over so many lives but forgotten in each new incarnation. If you knew yourself you would know these things so the reality of ourselves is the thing we need to understand to have proper perspective.

We change like the many universes. Buddhism explains many difficult concepts so if this interests you then I suggest you visit the Chanting Growers Group thread.

I am still trying to make sense of everything but it takes time to absorb and live the truth.

I have been working on this in my own direct experience, in my own contemplations over the years.

I have known intellectually for a while that my perception is in-direct, but only recently I have had a direct consciousness about it. Once this occurs you simply can't GO BACK to living in that old illusion.

Once you become conscious of who you really ARE, the false-conceptual-self that you lived as for many years is seen for what it really is.

A survival mechanism.

We have confused our "self" with our mind. And once this occurs, shit happens.

The self-mind as a survival mechanism goes to work protecting, creating, and maintaining the self that we believe and assume that we are. Obviously this is a conceptual self, because it is completely based on concepts.

The concepts are attachments and identifications with a whole bunch of beliefs and assumptions, including that we are our bodies, our thoughts, and our emotions.

This is not so, simply because anything that we are aware OF, can't be us. This is obvious.

If they are US, then who or what is aware OF these things?

 

[southflorida]

what then is 'imagination'?

is imagination real?

am i imagining the voice in my head?

and why is the voice in my head not my own?

should i really listen to it? even if it is delusional?

i am electric/chemical creature manifest in flesh, my being infinite, my body not. i was getting comfortable wearing this suit. now it no longer belongs to me...

positive chases negative in an endless dance of which we will eventually tire, and when it is said and done, we each will fade to background noise when confronted with the all.

man knows so little, and now apparantly less.

Nothing, and not-knowing are the truth, because they are what is original, authentic, and primary.

We came into this world NOT-KNOWING. Everything else we created through concepts. These concepts have been piled on top of what is primary.

All the secondary concepts are NOT what we really ARE, no matter how good they sound or how many people believe them, including ourselves.

We actually know nothing...but do believe and assume a whole lot.

 

[barnyard]

but the percepts are based on the inherent structure of the objective reality. As I said before it's dialectical process. Yes we are limited by our own bodies and to have a full direct understanding of reality we would need to be god like or omniscient. That's why I think your post is based on arrogance because, in a way, you're asking, "why aren't we Gods and experiencing reality directly?"

My previous statement: "Reality is SOCIALLY MEDIATED and occurs through the DIALECTIC INTERACTION of our PERCEPTS and CONCEPTS." Is not a summary of what you said but rather an explanation of how the world works.

Again, you continue to be solipsistic which means you're not recognizing a reality beyond our conceptions of it.

Do you have an understanding of phenomenological epistemology south? It says the reality has inherent structures that speak to us universally.

Let me put it another way. Why do we call a certain strain "Watermelon Haze"?. Why is it that someone who has never heard of or experienced this strain upon first encounter always say, "wow, that smells of Watermelon" Is that based on illusion or imagination or is it based on the reality, i,e, inherent characteristics of the strain itself? Please explain.

 

[1TWISTEDTRUCKER]

"Me standing between the railroad tracks at 8:04 and waiting for the 8:05 train will all happen inside my mind, not DIRECTLY as you and a few others believe and assume."

Not to put too finer a point on this statement...

This is pure unadulterated sophistry.
Better known in the vernacular as bullshit.
What undoubtedly will happen will definitely be in your mind...
Along with your face and skull.
It's called physics.
Why pretend otherwise? What's the point?

Still waiting for that field report. Bold claims require bold experiments.

And here I am in flip flops,,,,Im SOooo confused,

PEACE; 1TT