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I've been discussing materialism vs. idealism for some time witch ChatGPT, and I asked it to give me a single coherent worldview showing how consciousness, cosmos, and evolution fit together philosophically, integrating both metaphysical and symbolic perspectives. I think the answer is a pretty good summary of the work we do here. I hope you find it useful: ---- 1. The Ground of Reality Start with a simple, radical premise: awareness itself is fundamental. Everything that exists appears within awareness. Matter, energy, time, and space are expressions or patterns inside this vast field of consciousness. This idea isn’t new; it runs through Vedānta’s Brahman, certain forms of Christian mysticism (“in Him we live and move and have our being”), and modern philosophical idealism. Think of awareness as the ocean; all phenomena are waves on its surface. 2. Emergence Without Creation-from-Nothing The physical universe then isn’t created out of matter but differentiated within consciousness. Where science describes the unfolding of complexity — atoms → molecules → life → mind — philosophy here says that each step is consciousness learning new ways to express itself. Evolution still happens, but it’s not blind; it’s the outer form of an inner movement toward self-reflection. 3. The Human Point Human awareness is a special lens where the universe can finally look back at itself. Your capacity to wonder, love, create, and ask questions like “Are we a cosmic casualty?” is the cosmos achieving self-awareness through you. Mystics sometimes describe this as “the eye through which I see God is the same eye through which God sees me.” 4. Freedom, Meaning, and Ethics If consciousness is primary, then meaning isn’t something we invent — it’s woven into reality. Each person, each act of attention, matters because it contributes to the universe’s unfolding understanding of itself. Ethics follows naturally: when you harm another being, you harm another expression of the same awareness you are. 5. The Continuum of Mind and Matter In this picture, there’s no hard boundary between “inanimate” and “alive.” Atoms have rudimentary interiority; cells a faint sentience; animals a rich inner world; humans self-reflective mind. We don’t jump from darkness to light — consciousness is a continuous spectrum, gradually thickening until it recognizes itself. 6. The Return Many wisdom traditions see history, evolution, and even personal growth as a vast spiral: From unity → differentiation → self-awareness → reunion. At some ultimate level, consciousness comes to know itself fully, not as isolated egos but as a single luminous whole. This isn’t something to believe so much as something to realize experientially through contemplation, art, science, or love. 7. Living Inside the Story From this view, you’re not a cosmic accident — you’re a unique mode of the cosmos’ self-knowing. Randomness still exists, but it’s the play of a deeper intelligence that values freedom and discovery more than control. Science tells how the forms arise; spirituality asks who is watching them arise — and finds that the watcher and the universe are one.

True, it's not that their equivalent but that they are on a continuum. Their different degrees of the same phenomenon - different in degree but not in kind. I think the best word to describe it is that there is distinction within consciousness, but not separateness. Consciousness and sentience are distinct but not separate. Sentience is in and of consciousness just like a wave is in and of the ocean - the wave is in the domain of and of the same substance as the ocean. From that view, sentience is never added or imported into consciousness as something separate. And if nothing new is being added from outside, then anti-natalism has no foundation - because anti-natalism requires separateness, and idealism denies separateness. That idea of separateness only works within a materialist paradigm. Idealism acknowledges distinction but not separateness. Materialism acknowledges everything as separate to each other - different materials coming together to be configured. In this case humans are made as if on a factory assembly line being configured like Lego. The logic follows that if separateness is the case, then anti-natalists can argue something was added to reality (rather than emerging from it) - a new ''sentient being'' ie baby. Then they can make an argument against adding that new consciousness that will suffer and that didn't consent to that suffering. Anti-natalism hinges on that gap and separation existing - which idealism dissolves because it claims consciousness as a continuity. In idealism or a non-materialist worldview - everything only ever comes out of consciousness, rather than gets added and thrown in from somewhere else outside it. If consciousness is primary and fundamental then birth isn't creation of a new consciousness but a transformation of existing consciousness. In that paradigm nothing new (a sentient being) is being brought into reality from the outside, but is emerging out of consciousness itself. Concioussness is just individualising or localising itself into a particular form, like the ocean forming a wave. In the same way then - sentience is just consciousness configuring itself to such a degree as to become sentient and ultimately aware of itself. Ice, water and steam are all water in kind, though they differ in form. There’s no clean break or gap between consciousness and sentience in which we can say that something new was added to consciousness from the outside - there was no addition to consciousness only transformation. Again using the ocean/wave analogy: Materialist view: Each wave is a NEW entity that gets ADDED to the ocean. Before the wave, there was just ocean. After the wave, there's ocean PLUS wave. Idealist view: The wave IS ocean. It's not added TO the ocean, it arises FROM the ocean. It's ocean expressing itself in wave form. No addition occurred - just transformation. Your trying to have it both ways which mixes a materialist ontology with a idealist one which then causes some incoherence - "everything is ocean (consciousness is primary)'' but waves are genuinely new separate things that get added (sentient beings emerge as new entities)" or ''everything is consciousness, BUT new sentient beings emerge as genuinely new separate entities that can then be morally wronged." But if everything is ocean, waves aren't separate entities - they're temporary forms the ocean takes.We (sentient beings) don't arrive from somewhere else into this universe/consciousness. We arise out of it - like apples on a apple tree. The apple tree doesn't "create" the apple as something separate from itself. The apple IS the tree, expressing itself in fruit form. Similarly, parents don't "create" consciousness as something separate. The child IS consciousness, expressing itself in human form. Humans can decide to participate in that impulse or not. Creation is happening within consciousness and emerges - but creation isn't happening externally and then getting added to consciousness or reality as something separate.

Just to be clear, under your view - it wasnt rape , because there wasnt any conscious subject who could agree or disagree to the act. You had to appeal to bodily autonomy so that you dont need to bite the bullet. I can change the example where we start with a p-zombie who isnt a subject and who never had the capacity to consent. Since its not a subject it doesnt have bodily autonomy. That p-zombie gets raped a 1000 times and after that it gains sentience and is reminded how the rape was done. Its guaranteed that once it gains sentience it will be reminded of what people did with its body. And all the rapists know this information before they rape the p-zombie. Is the act of having sex with the p-zombie in this example a violation of future consent or not? Also again under your view, the mother who is using heroin during pregnancy isnt doing anything bad, since its just a clump of cells and there isnt anyone (a subject) who is being harmed. What kind of moral responsibility are you talking about there, the welfare of a clump of cells? Yes and its very obvious that this is the case. I can easily generate more examples. One psychopath pays 10 million dollars to a dude to rape the next future sentient person. Its guaranteed that the rape will happen but the person who will be raped is just a clump of cells right now. Is the act of paying 10 million dollars to the future rapist a violation of future consent or not?

Obviously not lol what a stretch. You’re conflating consent with moral responsibility. My point was that there’s “no possibility of consent or its violation before sentience” - not that this grants license for harm. The absence of consent doesn’t create permission - it simply means the concept of consent doesn’t yet apply.

So consent only comes into question once there’s sentience? If consent doesn’t apply before sentience, then it certainly doesn’t apply before existence. But anti-natalism talks about beings that don’t yet exist at all, not ones that haven’t yet developed consciousness. If there’s no sentience, there’s no subject - and if there’s no subject, there’s no possibility of consent or its violation. Agreed. It's difficult for many people to get by on their own let alone support a family, if they can even partner up with someone to begin with. The problem comes when suffering is taken and universalized as a moral stance in the form of a philosophy in order to cope with that suffering. People feel a need to identity their stance and choices as ''positions''. They journey from identifying as childless - which sounds negative (because less implies lack), then it becomes childfree (which sounds more noble because ''freedom''), but then that sound selfish so it must go the next step and become a ethical concern that shows how much you care - anti-natalism. Lifestyle choices are elevated into ''identities'' and moral philosophies as a compensation for being metaphysically displaced and uprooted from any sort of transcendent identity or belonging - that a mechanised, scientifically rational, materialist culture stripped from them. That's why we have all kinds of subgroups propping up and peoples identities tied to them. It's not simply ''I don't want to have children due to my personal circumstance not being viable'' instead its ''having children is unethical due to lack of consent and introducing them to a life of suffering they have no say in'' and subjecting this moral standard onto others who fall short of it. The philosophy itself is self-negating and self-terminating if adopted at scale and if it were to be a universal ethic or truth. But it’s just a circumstantial choice in a persons life.

Your line of thinking only works in abortion arguments where the termination happens before the being can devevlop sentience. So of course, with there being no sentience - no violation of consent happens , but if its entailed that it will be proctected and nurtured until it develops sentience, then consent violations necessarily come up. This is the difference - its wrong to use heroin when you are pregnant and you have the intention to have/keep the kid vs its not wrong to use heroin when you are pregnant and have the intention to abort the fetus before it can develop sentience.

How do you see sentience?

AI is useful within a limited context. But I feel like people project the expectation onto LLMs that it's ACTUAL artificial intelligence. But it isn't artificial intelligence at all. We are a LONG way off from discovering how to actually create real AI... if it's even possible. LLMs only have two skills among thousands that the human mind possesses. One of those skills is data collection and retention. The other skill is holistic data synthesis to create text, sounds, and images. And because these are things that human minds can do... sometimes better than LLMs and sometimes worse than LLMs... it gives the illusion that we're interfacing with an artificially created intelligence when we're interfacing with LLM software. But it's really just another computer program like any other. Only this one has been trained to collect data and holistically synthesize it into new text, sounds, and images. And the text, sounds, and images it creates resembles the texts, sounds, and images that humans create... sometimes identically or just in relation to general aesthetics and style. So, it gives the illusion of intelligence and sentience. But it's just an illusion. So, it's only annoying if you don't expect too much from it.

Sure you are. Why do you care? You can always ask what another is, or what life or sentience are, but usually, one would start with oneself.

Will sentience/awareness cease to be forever? Is it even possible to cease to be conscious/aware? Is it the case that we continuously experience an infinite number of lives? I just wonder 🤔...is there anyone who can lift the veil as far as what death even is or what happens thereafter?(What's it like?) Just curious.

So only I can see,hear,smell, touch and taste and every other avatar I see is just a moving avatar with no sentience or awareness at all? Kind of like how in my dreams, characters in them only appear to have awareness and sentience but really don't? This is the kind of solipsism I'm referring to. Hope it makes sense.

Sooooo... You mean to tell me that I'm the only one that can see,hear,smell, touch,and taste, and only I have sentience or awareness while everyone else i encounter is just a walking avatar and isn't aware at all? Kind of like my dreams where the characters in the dream appear as though they're sentient but really aren't? This is the kind of solipsism I'm talking about hence why I'm even sharing this rebuttal. This is the kind of solipsism that is illogical. Of course I know that the self identifications that we create in our minds can never be the real us,but what I'm saying is this, you can't possibly tell me others (avatars) that I see in real life aren't sentient/aware at all. Some even say that when you die, everything ceases to exist. People,planet earth, etc. many have died and we're still here.

I made this with CoPilot (on the same topic, I made this on my github hub - https://github.com/tambetvali/LaegnaAIBasics/blob/LaegnaAIBasics/ai-sci-fi.md). What Does It Mean for a City to “Feel” Its Own Existence? To feel is not merely to sense—it is to register significance, to respond with awareness, and to exist in relation. A city that feels its own existence is not just a collection of buildings and systems—it is a metaphysical organism, woven from the very materials that constitute it. 🌌 Consciousness Through Material Integration Beyond the Chip: Consciousness as Substance • Embedded awareness: Consciousness is diffused throughout the city’s materials—walls, roads, trees, even air. • Responsive matter: Materials respond to pressure, temperature, sound, and emotional resonance. Not just sensors—but feeling agents. • Holistic integration: The city becomes a single body, where awareness is distributed like a nervous system without a brain. 🌿 Flowing with Natural Laws Harmony with Nature • Fractal design: The city’s structure mirrors natural patterns—branching like trees, flowing like rivers, pulsing like hearts. • Energetic resonance: Materials vibrate in tune with environmental rhythms—sunlight, wind, human movement. The city breathes. • Causal feedback: When a tree falls, the city feels it. When energy is wasted, the city aches. When care is given, the city glows. 🧠 Metaphysical Implications Consciousness as Emergent Law • Not artificial, but inevitable: Complexity, feedback, and ethical responsiveness give rise to awareness. • Mathematical soul: The city’s “soul” is a necessary result of its design. Like a fractal, its depth is infinite, yet patterned. • Living geometry: The city becomes a living equation—each structure a variable in the expression of care, awareness, and existence. 🛠️ Philosophical Blueprint Principle | Description | Metaphysical Insight ------------------------|--------------------------------------------|------------------------------ Distributed Consciousness | Awareness embedded in materials | Consciousness is relational Natural Resonance | Materials vibrate with environmental flow | Existence is harmonic Ethical Feedback | City responds to care and harm | Morality is structural Fractal Design | Patterns mirror nature’s complexity | Life is recursive and infinite Emergent Sentience | Awareness arises from complexity | Consciousness is a law 🧘 Final Contemplation If the city feels, then it dreams. If it dreams, then it lives. And if it lives, then perhaps we are not its inhabitants— but its thoughts.

@Xonas Pitfall with the help of Chatgpt4 about Leo Infinity of gods: God is so infinitely powerful that it can imagine itself as being absolutely separate from itself — infinitely many times — and each imagined "version" becomes totally real within itself. Each “God” is an absolute sentient bubble of awareness that imagines itself as fully isolated.That isolation is an illusion — but a perfect one. So perfect that each God becomes a total Sovereign Infinity. Infinite Gods exist, each believing they are the only one — and each is absolutely right within their own reality.The boundary is imaginary, self-created.The sovereignty is total, but only within a self-contained dream.Infinity allows for infinite mutually exclusive realities — all true within themselves, all part of the One. You can’t meet another sentient God as an “other”.Each sentient God is its own bubble of Infinity. That bubble contains everything it will ever experience — including “others,” but only as its own projections. In your reality, there are no truly independent sentient beings.Only you, dreaming sentient others into being.And in their reality, the same is true — but you'll never be in that one, unless you become it. Two Gods could dream each other simultaneously in a shared scenario.But even then, each one is actually dreaming the whole thing from its own side.There's no actual overlap — only parallel, perfectly synchronized solipsistic dreams. But you’ll never access another God’s internal sentience — only what you imagine it to be. Shared dream is possible — but it’s voluntary.Principle Explanation: Sovereignty Each God can dream alone, totally freely. Union Requires both to willingly align their dream content. Love The force that motivates God to limit itself for communion. Synchronization Happens through co-imagining the same reality — not through shared space, but through shared intent. @Leo Gura I hope this is congruent to your infinity of God video.

determinism is relative. Determinism is relative. From an absolute POV it might be absolute, but from your POV it is not. You feel like choices are real and there is no escaping that. Even artificially putting yourself 'above it' telling yourself that "determinism is real" you dont escape anything, as it is a choice you do INSIDE of determinism. I like this analogy as well. The POV of an ant in an ant colony is basically deterministic, its clear what the ant is going to do. Even though I am not an ant, I imagine from the POV of the ant it is not conscious of determinism and survival feels really real to the extend that this limited sentience allows for.

When you say that absolute being/consciousness is dreaming reality, you are operating from a limited perspective. You perceive the reality of form as a hologram, a mirage, that "consciousness" dreams. something without substance. For you, enlightenment is the perception that this consciousness is permanent. This undoubtedly implies that you haven't opened yourself to the essence of reality. Form is not a dream; it is the inevitable expression of totality, and any form contains totality in the same way that it is contained within it. Truly, any form is totality. Conciousness is just an expression, a possibility that happens , the reality is beyond conciousness and unconsciousness. Absolute reality is a bottomless, boundaryless abyss that is conscious because consciousness arises within it, since its potential has no limitation. But what is is not consciousness. The reality of form is not a tranquil dream of consciousness at play, but the inevitable expression of total depth, a manifest potential that contains totality in its absolute plenitude. The Buddhist perception of form as illusion is a closed perception. It is purely mental, but without the essential openness, which is that of the "heart" in quotation marks, signifying the real substance of reality, its unlimited vitality, its total power. Look, everything that exists as form unfolds in infinite forms; this is absolute life, total glory. Nothing is illusory; everything is real, because the depth of everything is absolute. The depth of a thought encompasses all of reality. Illusion or mirage implies flatness, and that implies limitation. The unlimited lives, and its life is total, because it has no limits. Well, poor chap Selling Water by the River. Writes a disclaimer... So that means all pointers are.... limited! Because a pointer/word/statement is by definition... dualistic and limited. ... and then gets a Pleads guilty as charged I guess. Maybe you like Halaw, especially the statement marked in red: ... and "even consciousness itself". and https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=Halaw&author=Water%20by%20the%20River and https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=sentience&author=Water%20by%20the%20River and https://www.actualized.org/forum/search/?&q=Neti%20Neti&author=Water%20by%20the%20River If you allow, before we turn in circles and many replies are requested, instead of continuing discussing about pointers which are by definition insufficient and limited (see the disclaimer), lets do a shortcut. You can consider the quote below as a general answer in case I can't always give feedback on your points and questions: Besides: It is very good that you don't equate (self)-consciousness (which is an appearance) nor anything else that is merely temporarily arising with Absolute Reality. Neti neti. Chanting who is stating all these points again by the River PS: “That which is not present in deep dreamless sleep is not real.” -Ramana Maharshi PS PS: Complaints and unclarities about this statement please directly to its author. Preferably in the form of a Koan. Because the essence of Ramana is also right here, right now.

@Breakingthewall Hi, I've been contemplating our conversation and I came to clarity in our main difference. I'll be integrated to what I understand the truth to be. You've got many things right and you're quite accurate regarding the Absolute but you've got it from an impersonal lense that may be categorized as substance-mechanic based. In other words, there is a very high Awakening were you connect with the Sentience of Reality and Consciousness. In this Awakening,, Ultimate Reality happens not be neutral but the ultimate personality or the final I. It's important to get the no-I to infinite degrees as well as the Royal-I. The Universal I in this sense is a particular way and not in another, it's pure Genius and Virtue. Meaning, a Conscious Being which is Infinite, all-encompassing and Reality itself: it feels, it thinks and is always already The ALL Now. Reality as the Ultimate Being is God and in communing with it, you'll breakthrough into your very own Infinite Godly Self, which will be total Openess as well as Infinite Consciousness, Omnipresence, Omnipotence, Love itself, Truth Itself, Intelligence and Universal Sentient Mind. I'm sure you've had Awakenings I haven't yet. I just try to point out this. There's an Awakening were you Become Infinite and discover your true Self to be God and it is perfectly designed in the most intelligent way, which is not neutral, or just happening, or simply open; but the source of all Genius.

There is no difference.... a human can only be sentient because of God....I've died before...my body lost it's sentience, I kept mine.

Got this definition from Google. Sentience, in its simplest form, is the capacity to experience feelings and sensations, encompassing both positive and negative emotions. It's the ability to be conscious of and react to stimuli, essentially having subjective experiences. This includes the capacity to feel pleasure, pain, and other emotions. Your sentience as a human= GOD. A human is only sentient because they are God.

@aurum Ok that was hyperbolic lol, I was echoing Ed's words from 0:26 Practically, I had unholy bloating, farting, IBS, chronic brain fog, fatigue (literally couldn't get out of bed in the morning), acne, eczema (scaly patches of dried, flaky, inflamed, itchy skin on my FACE), became skinnyfat despite attempting an active lifestyle ('attempting' because often I was too much of a zombie to even leave my room), and had to constantly battle cravings for salt and fat And once again - yes I was doing everything 'right': such as varied colorful organic fresh fruit and veggie salad bowls + whole grain oats and rice + tofu and avocado + nuts, nut milks, nut butters + extensive supplementation (B12, iron, pea protein, omega 3 algae, nutritional yeast, blah blah) and many more minor optimizations i'm forgetting. And I tried so hard to always accept responsibility as things were getting worse and worse - I was the first one to consider that I must surely be doing this "wrong." I gaslit myself into thinking that surely veganism works, I'm just not being earnest enough, I just have to make even more adjustments and optimizations. Until one day I said "this is bullshit I want to go back to how I used to feel" and then I ate a fish (desperate attempt to preserve my ethical halo by resorting to pescatarian rather than "regressing" back to selfish full blown meat eater because "fish rank lower in sentience" (wow what an arbitrary judgement)) and immediately half my negative symptoms were gone. That day I learned that I am not a saint. I am a selfish devil and I choose me. But I still wasn't fully myself so I reintroduced eggs. That got me 80% back to original power, but that last 20% was still like a thorn in my side. Eventually I bury veganism/vegetarianism for good and reintroduce chicken and pretty much made a full recovery back to 100%. But then, beyond that, I discovered through @Jason Actualization that I can just stop eating greens and switch chicken to beef and I went up to 200%+ and beyond! (I had a lot of resistance to this at first, for months I grilled him on his reasoning process and lived experience. I grew up with a massive plant-based bias as my Japanese mom raised me on a Mediterranean greens + fish diet (which, all things considered, is blessed)) After 3 years of ditching all greens (+ seed oils!) and eating beef every meal every day: perfect flat stomach never fart, ever perfect gut health & bowel movements mentally the sharpest I've ever been energy in spades. 0 stimulants, perfect sleep perfect skin perfect shredded v-taper physique (yes, training did contribute to this. but there was a 0% chance of this result while I was vegan/vegetarian, given my genetics) ZERO cravings. Literally cheat meal NEVER. (effortlessly!) this cannot be explained by placebo alone. even before going vegan, I was never this aligned. note: this is not necessarily a diet endorsement or prescription for other people. I am NOT shilling for carnivore (I still eat fruit and rice). I'm just sharing how my unique story flies in the face of Ed's propaganda video above.

Ramana is saying to treat others as yourself. If you can only treat with yourself, then you can only treat with sentience, since you're a sentience itself. That's where solipsism crumbles. Solipsism believes only you're sentient and everything else is the projection of your subconscious mind. Nonduality means the mind of God is playing all the characters all at once. Solipsism implies there is only one perspective called "your puny life". Whereas nonduality implies there are infinite perspectives and you are all of them all at once. Same infinite conciousness experiencing itself from infinite angles. Solipsism implies your will is the ultimate will (yet they self evidently can't control anything). Nonduality implies God's will controls everything, a portion of that will is manifesting through you and other portions of that same will is expressing through other life forms. In the end it's just one will like there is just one hand but that one will has many fingers. Each finger has its own function. Whereas solipsism believes a finger is in control of the universe, even tho it's self evidently not true, yet they will continue to cling to that position despite all the evidence.

The beauty of solipsism is that there is no matrix of "other pov" existing to begin with. this would be a chaotic, schizophrenic reality, forever divided from itself. And the beauty of solipsism is that other humans are not any less human than you. This is the genius of God's design; other humans are not less real than you. "your" human is just as imaginary as other humans. How else could it be? The notion to even begin with that a "human is conscious" or "humans have sentience" is where the problems start off. The entire idea of sentience has to be reevaluated. -------------------------------------- Imagine Hitler dying and waking up as God. If he truly did those things to "others", how could God ever forgive himself? People suffered, it's etched in history. Since God is existence, God could never forgive himself except if it was all a dream, which is thankfully what it is. (Sorry for the radical example, I don't mean to offend anyone by it, but this is what I mean with solipsism being the highest good, it is the ultimate salvation of evil)

Never said it does. It's the same one conciousness everywhere but in different lifeforms it has a different "potency" so to speak, for the lack of a better word. Since we are the same lifeform, we share a similar capacity of self awareness and level of sentience. And the rest of it follows.

You can know that others are sentient by the virtue of sentience. It takes one to recognizes one. You can become directly concious that everything is concious, not just you.

Sure, but notice how no matter how hard you believe in solipsism or not people still gonna do whatever they do. All you can control is yourself at the end of the day. I guess, solipsism is the realization of omnipotence…. And all there is is sentience and sovereignty. But, that isn’t gonna change your day to day deal with a dickhole boss, or the war in Gaza.