What is experience?

[Mu_]

17 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Again, the fact that something is distinct doesn’t mean it is separate. That might be beside the point, though--distinction deserves its own thread. You seem to think that distinguishing something is bad or wrong; you want to believe that everything is one, but you don’t want to challenge what may be just a notion. Even then, both things might be true, paradoxically--everything being one and things being different from each other. But that's an interesting idea for us right now. 

Take your experience of eating a meal as an example: What is actually happening while you eat, and by contrast, what do you think is happening? What mental activities are you generating that are extraneous to a “raw” encounter?

You might be eating soup and finding it rather bland and unappetizing. Or maybe you’re eagerly devouring a piece of cake. Can you begin to pick out different kinds of activities within your experience of eating a particular meal?

Sure I could describe all sorts of things like this but it never really gets at what it is like to experience it. 
 

and no where did you get the idea I think it’s bad or wrong to distinguish. 
 

my only point was you can experience experiences but never experience isolated by itself. 

[UnbornTao]

46 minutes ago, Mu_ said:

Sure I could describe all sorts of things like this but it never really gets at what it is like to experience it. 
 

and no where did you get the idea I think it’s bad or wrong to distinguish. 
 

my only point was you can experience experiences but never experience isolated by itself. 

Don't describe them; make fine distinctions within what is commonly a vague experience. You can become conscious of the nature of experience -- not without questioning, though. Actually go through some of the exercises and notice the matter isn't simplistic at all, despite our notions about it. 

Edited May 12 by UnbornTao

[Natasha Tori Maru]

On 10/05/2025 at 10:55 PM, Mu_ said:

 

did you read any of my responses

Of course I did.

I just did not think your responses were diving into a succinct answer. 

[Anton Rogachevski]

7 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

Hey, maybe 'the experiencer' is conceptual rather than experiential, so there might as well be something existing that is not experience, or experienced. 

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. 

[Anton Rogachevski]

16 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

@Anton Rogachevski Nice, thank you for the response. It is quite the mu. What would you call a direct experience of something? What if in this context direct experience is not an experience, but more like consciousness? Also, what would you say concept is? Can you see, in your answer, what's conceptual? 

Isn't the presumed impossibility of direct access a notion you've concluded? We may know what is experienced, yet what is that knowing? As you imply, it is indirect, not the thing itself. We can know about things and have insights, which is a more direct or grounded knowing. In addition to that, we hear stories of direct consciousness, which is about personally getting at the heart of things. 

It does seem like experience is everything we have -- that it is where "life" happens for us.

We could use our responses to break apart the many assumptions we may be sharing on this topic. For example, is it true that in order to investigate experience one needs to be separate from it? How do you view your self? Is it considered to be a part of experience, perhaps? Is it actually the case that perception implies a perceiver? 

Why do we generally assume that perception is primary, and experience secondary? 

Some food for thought.

might edit my response.

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".

Edited May 13 by Anton Rogachevski

[Anton Rogachevski]

On 5/7/2025 at 7:50 PM, UnbornTao said:

If we could pinpoint "experience", what would we point at?

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.

[UnbornTao]

9 hours ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

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. 

A memory, say, may be experienced but it isn't an experience. Because, among other things, what it is referring to is not happening now, it is about a past event. In that sense, it could be called a concept, a story. Now, we may have found one component of experience: it is always occurring now.

What about awareness?

[Anton Rogachevski]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

A memory, say, may be experienced but it isn't an experience. Because, among other things, what it is referring to is not happening now, it is about a past event. In that sense, it could be called a concept, a story. Now, we may have found one component of experience: it is always occurring now.

What about awareness?

A memory is occuring in direct experience right now, but you attach a story to it and say: "it happened in the past".

Awareness is another word for experience for me, because if I try to think of an Awareness that has nothing to be aware of, it doesn't makes sense. This "awareness" will not be able to know that it's aware in this case. Therefore awareness and experience are one for me. Two sides of the same coin.

I ask myself: "Where is awareness? Who is aware?" And I can see that these questions can't point anywhere actually. 

Experience is self aware from the purely solipsistic-phenomenological perspective (from the inside of the simulation)

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

it is always occurring now.

What isn't occurring Now? Can there be such a thing?

Edited May 13 by Anton Rogachevski

[UnbornTao]

@Anton Rogachevski You could be open to the possibility of direct access or knowledge. 

How do you see knowledge and experience? Why do you see them as the same? Would you say there are other kinds of knowing? What about perception and its relationship to experience? 

4 hours ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

A memory is occuring in direct experience right now, but you attach a story to it and say: "it happened in the past".

Awareness is another word for experience for me, because if I try to think of an Awareness that has nothing to be aware of, it doesn't makes sense. This "awareness" will not be able to know that it's aware in this case. Therefore awareness and experience are one for me. Two sides of the same coin.

I ask myself: "Where is awareness? Who is aware?" And I can see that these questions can't point anywhere actually. 

Experience is self aware from the purely solipsistic-phenomenological perspective (from the inside of the simulation)

What isn't occurring Now? Can there be such a thing?

The memory itself is the story of something that happened. What's happening now is the activity called memory, which is conceptual. What the memory refers to, even though it may be thought of as a past experience, isn't an experience now. Notice the crucial point: we tend to live as if a memory is the same as the experience it is referring to! It is held as a re-experiencing, but it isn't.

Well, different words are used for a reason. "I'm aware" is not exactly the same as "I experience." 

The wonder and inherent openness is the point of such questions. What is awareness may be a topic for another time. 

[Anton Rogachevski]

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Would you say there are other kinds of knowing?

Don't know what "Knowing" is other than direct experience knowing in the now. Any other form's probably a fancy sort of belief. 

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

You could be open to the possibility of direct access or knowledge. 

We do have direct access to experience. What else do you want to access?

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

perception

Also a layered idea on top of experience. Entails a "perceiver" of an outside world.

 

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

activity called memory, which is conceptual

Memory is memory, it's a recording of pure senses, but a concept is words, a story, so In a sense a concept is also a type of memory of a noise playing in the Now. A memory is yet another part of experience, which is very rich as we can see - it's much more than dumb animal senses, but a great intelligence and a thing of true beauty.

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

It is held as a re-experiencing, but it isn't.

But it is re-experience, or else how would you talk about it? You have an experience of it right now. You can only imagine it's in the "past" if you have a conception of "time" present. 

 

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

Well, different words are used for a reason. "I'm aware" is not exactly the same as "I experience." 

You may ask yourself: "Aware of what?" anything you may be aware of would be an experience.

 

41 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

The wonder and inherent openness is the point of such questions.

I do respect the wish to keep this an open discussion and keep investigating together, this is great! Thank you for the great talk. My personal approach is to keep simplifying and to keep as less synonyms of definition as possible. You can see now how calling different aspects of the same unified phenomenon: Awareness has caused us to think that all the other aspects of it are separate from it, and are different in nature.

We are pure Experience that is self examining right now, quite cool I would say.

Edited May 13 by Anton Rogachevski

[Anton Rogachevski]

37 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

"I'm aware" is not exactly the same as "I experience." 

Experience is usually from direct sensation, and Awareness may be of a more complex and abstarct aspects of experience, inculding thought.

Edited May 13 by Anton Rogachevski

[UnbornTao]

55 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

Don't know what "Knowing" is other than direct experience knowing in the now. Any other form's probably a fancy sort of belief. 

If we're considering experience in the usual fashion, then that is indirect -- a sensory encounter, or the process of making sense of that. You encounter something -- What is it that you're calling direct?

We can know about something, identify it, like "that is a nice yellow shirt." We can know how it relates to us and what charge it has for us, yet I wouldn't call this direct but perhaps personal experience.

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We do have direct access to experience. What else do you want to access?

Do we? 

Direct access as in direct consciousness. But I think we are starting to speculate too much. Let's keep it real.

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Also a layered idea on top of experience. Entails a "perceiver" of an outside world.

Seems to be more objective than a mere idea, I don't see why it has to entail a perceiver. It could be like the body functioning -- a function of biological life that occurs rather naturally on its own.

A perceiving is pure and impersonal, as Wei Wu Wei said. 

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Memory is memory, it's a recording of pure senses, but a concept is words, a story, so In a sense a concept is also a type of memory of a noise playing in the Now. A memory is yet another part of experience, which is very rich as we can see - it's much more than dumb animal senses, but a great intelligence and a thing of true beauty.

Not at all. In my experience (), memory is incredibly biased and subjective. It is safe to say that it often is a complete misrepresentation of "what happened." The recording that you talk about sounds like a pipe dream -- we likely didn't even payed much attention to what actually happened. 

Concept is a much broader notion than a mere idea. 

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But it is re-experience, or else how would you talk about it? You have an experience of it right now.

It is not. A memory of playing football is not the experience of playing, since we've established that the experience it is referring to isn't happening now. It is a thought. 

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You may ask yourself: "Aware of what?" anything you may be aware of would be an experience.

Not aware of something but the fact of awareness itself.

Regarding your second sentence, yes, it seems to be that way. It is tricky. It doesn't mean they're the same, though. 

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I do respect the wish to keep this an open discussion and keep investigating together, this is great! Thank you for the great talk.

Cheers! 

Edited May 13 by UnbornTao

[UnbornTao]

25 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

Experience is usually from direct sensation, and Awareness may be of a more complex and abstarct aspects of experience, inculding thought.

Hmmm, we might need to get back to the drawing board. Let's leave awareness for another time. 

Edited May 13 by UnbornTao

[Sucuk Ekmek]

Experience is your  platonic love.

[UnbornTao]

3 hours ago, Sucuk Ekmek said:

Experience is your  platonic love.

?

So easy.

[Anton Rogachevski]

@UnbornTao

It seems that you have a philosophical mind and that's very cool. You like ideas, differentiation and complexity and to some point you might expect this complexity so much that you feel unease with simplicity like Leo's famous "just look at your hand and shut up." And my simplistic collapsing of ideas into one notion.

I think that those words are useful still and can describe different aspects as different procceses and that can help with linear thought explanations. So I'm still not throwing them all out.

"What's the difference between awareness and experience?" seems like a very juicy question so lets keep contemplating.

Cheers

[Sucuk Ekmek]

7 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

?

So easy.

If you take experience out, you are not an individual anymore. On the other hand if you depend on your experience you are a fool. Do you see any other way? I would like to be free of aesthetical concerns.

[UnbornTao]

6 hours ago, Sucuk Ekmek said:

If you take experience out, you are not an individual anymore. On the other hand if you depend on your experience you are a fool. Do you see any other way? I would like to be free of aesthetical concerns.

What is experience? Not experience as skill or knowledge but the fact of experiencing. Not sure what you mean by your last sentence. 

[UnbornTao]

@Anton Rogachevski When looking at your hand, extraneous activities to the mere encounter might start to become apparent, so we can see that within an apparently obvious experience, there's more going on with it than we initially thought. 

[Anton Rogachevski]

8 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

@Anton Rogachevski When looking at your hand, extraneous activities to the mere encounter might start to become apparent, so we can see that within an apparently obvious experience, there's more going on with it than we initially thought. 

While the idea of "mere" experience seems simple experience itself is an infinitely complex and fascinating structure. There is always A LOT going on, but our brain is designed to focus and filter out all the other stimuli, like a search light.

There's actually no such object as a "hand", and it's not "yours".

Edited May 14 by Anton Rogachevski