Anton Rogachevski

As the old Zen quote says: "You can't peg a nail into the sky." If you truly understand the nature of experience, at least conceptually, you can understand that this question doesn't make sense. There's an infinite field that's unified in it's nature, so there's no one to point and no thing to point to.

How can you know anything? What does it mean for you to "know"? Knowing what? And following that: What is real? What do you mean by "reality"? Does it exist? What does it mean for something to "exist"? How can you know that logic can depict or describe or predict the fundamental nature of reality?

Thank you for the discussion dear sir! Yummy food for thought for sure! You can't call the basic first experience anything, it's prior to language. On the other hand all the labels we have ever had we stuck on this pure wonder, but it just doesn't do it justice. Like: "reality" "existence" "the universe" and so forth. Consciousness and experience are two sides of the same coin. Consciousness is the backdrop and Experience is the light, but they are the same stuff essentially. About the presumption of the impossibility of a direct access (access to what actually?) it goes both ways. You can either assume you can or that you can't : ) In this equation knowing = experiencing Experience is prior to "perception", since in order to conceive of this idea you have to already have some basic experience. The fact that we are discussing this seems to suggest that we can in fact investigate it from the inside whilst being a part of it. The power of conception and abstraction are forces to be reckoned with. When you try to talk about an "awareness" that's prior to experience you are back to duality and creating an imaginary thing that "perceives".

The moment you think about something that isn't an experience your are experiencing it. How else would you think about it? Tell me something any thing that isn't experience.

Yep "At its basic level you can't make something true by stating it as fact (using language)." Of course not.

@LastThursday What are some non-survival purposes?

@LastThursday Thank you, this is profound! God is love is not two things but one isn't it? God=love=reality I think that logic is the grammer of the way the brain is figuring things out.

Is God hidden?

What is "truth"? Do you know it?

@Someone here The problem is that I do think I know, but it's quite complicated to explain. You can read in my blog in the signature.

@Someone here Why do you think that I ignored? You have great insight and I appreciate that you shared it. I like absurdism, but I don't think that it goes deep enough.

What does I AM mean?

@Yimpa Finding true things that offend?

Still it's interesting to hear other opinions : )

Interesting thought, but it's a paradox. If you had truth why would you need to construct it again?

@Someone here That's great! Thanks! @ExploringReality ❤️ same

Mu! All we can know is Experience, it is everything we had ever known and could possibly know. We actually know nothing but it. We are like the fish in the water of experience, except that in our case it's even worse - we are a Sea within an infinite Sea with no land anywhere, no fish! That may be quite scary to hear, but it is essential to understand as it is the most basic epistemic foundation on top of which we will eventually build the idea of "reality". Yes we can only have an idea of reality, and never the actual reality itself, since we don't actually have access to it, but through the senses and through thoughts. One would have to be "outside and separate from experience" to examine it as an object, which isn't technically possible, since we can only access what is experienced by us directly right now, and will never by definiton know what is supposedly "outside of experience" except as a story, because we can't ever experience a "non-experience", as you can already see it's an oxymoron. There can't be an experience of "nothing", it wouldn't register and wouldn't exist for us phenomenologically. Yes, you can become aware that everything is Nothing at it's foundation, experience is completely empty - and that's precisely what makes us able to experience in the first place. To understand this you need see it directly and very clearly with an incredible level of awareness, but that's a little more advanced. That Emptiness is quite full and amazing, and not the "nothingness" you are imagining right now. From a purely phenomenological perspective, without supposing a physical plane outside of perception, there's no such thing as an "experience" as a separate object which you can discuss, it's an idea that can only occur if you have another idea of "non-experience". If you realize there's no such thing, experience as separate phenomenon which you can talk about can't make sense anymore without a background. You can see a black circle on a white background, but if both the background and and the circle were black, you couldn't see it, and it would stop existing for you phenomenologically. Interestingly enough one could also say: You are experience! It's your fundamental nature - experience that is seemingly self generative and self aware, or as Leo would put it: "An infinite hallucination". Perception on the other hand is a bit problematic because the ideas of a "perceived thing", and a "perceiver" are already contained within it, it assumes a mereological materialistic perspective. In this imaginary scenario "experience" is the signal that is being generated by the "brain". You could in this supposed materialistic perspective say that: "Experience is the simulation of the brain", but it's another imaginary story within the infinite hallucination that is you.

There cannot be such a thing, from the perspective of an experiencer at least.

If everything is presumably God, how can the devil exist? Is the devil also all powerful in his deception? Then how can an enlightened person so self assuredly claim that he so easily overcame this all powerful deception? How does he know for certain that it's not just another trick by the devil that made him think that he's "god" and that now he knows everything? Does Enlightenment remove all doubt from the system?

@ExploringReality How do you know?

Cool! : ) By system I meant the psyche. So an enlightened person feels 100% sure he's got it, he has 100% Truth and he doesn't doubt it anymore?

@Someone here "Reality" how does that relate to experience? I don't know if it exists. Names are meaningless beast noises. I don't think anything at all. There's just experience. I guess I can live with that. I think it's too optimistic to hope for an ontology beyond that.

@Someone here Dunno what you mean by "energy" or "nature", haven't we just agreed that there's just experience?

So in your view the Devil is not a problem at all? There's no challenge to overcome his deception? Is there devilish deception?

@Someone here So experience just is - sounds like phenomenological ontology. Where's the epistemology here? Why do you call your experience truth? What does it mean for it to be truth? How do you define "Truth"? No siree nothing obvious at all, or else I wouldn't post this topic.