What is experience?

[UnbornTao]

18 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

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".

You point at interpretation, so setting that activity aside for the moment, we may be getting closer at a "mere" encounter of what's there, or perceived to be there.

[Anton Rogachevski]

@UnbornTao

I jump between the conceptual and actual seamlessly because I figure we already established what is what. 

What do you mean by "mere encounter" and by "what's there"? 

[UnbornTao]

Just now, Anton Rogachevski said:

@UnbornTao

I jump between the conceptual and actual seamlessly because I figure we already established what is what. 

What do you mean by "mere encounter" and by "what's there"? 

Those are the questions to contemplate. What is there when our various mental activities (interpretation, association, memory, knowledge, and so on) are set aside? That might point at experiencing something for itself.

[Anton Rogachevski]

@UnbornTao Colors, sounds, sensations and feelings?

[Aaron p]

It definitely feels like experience can be reduced down to simple physical particles /objects... But check out this insight:

 

[UnbornTao]

1 hour ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

@UnbornTao Colors, sounds,

That sounds like perception.

1 hour ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

sensations

Not sure whether to include that in the category of perception. It depends on what we're talking about and what kind of sensations we are referring to. Hey, another thing to investigate in a new thread.

1 hour ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

and feelings?

Feeling is more about the conceptually-produced activities we engage in, so we wouldn't find feeling within perception itself -- maybe not even in the "perception" of a feeling.

So, we see we don't really know what experience is, experientially. Progress! To be clear, I'm not presuming that through this discussion we'll necessarily reach, at some point, 'the answer,' or a satisfying conclusion that will do the job for us. It's more like an invitation to open up and see where that leads us, hopefully to an insight.

[Anton Rogachevski]

16 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

perception

What do you mean by that word? Who perceives? Perceives what?

Aren't sounds and colors also sensations?

Let's imagine no sounds, no colors, no sensations, no feelings, what is left? Can there be any experience without these foundational building blocks?

I was saying from the start that experience was ineffable and indescribable. 

I feel we got lost in words here a little bit - It's best to define and differentiate all of these from each other to understand what is meant here.

Edited May 14 by Anton Rogachevski

[Anton Rogachevski]

@Aaron p

Yep, eventually we confuse our abstraction with reality itself. 

[Sucuk Ekmek]

3 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

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

Okay, let's go. Here's what I think:
From a survival perspective, experience is a witness to energy, it's a form of self-reflection and thus comes with knowledge or recognition. I don't think any knowledge is separate from the aesthetic aspect, because humans strive for excellence and that excellence is inseparable from what we perceive as beautiful.
So, we can't just do whatever we like, because where there is recognition there is an aesthetic aspect, or shall we say, concern about our self-reflection.

I have no idea about the fact of experiencing. Fact is something provable, and everything I write here is unprovable or perhaps you mean something different by fact of experiencing.

[Natasha Tori Maru]

Hmm, do we think 'experience' is embedded in the story we attribute to it?

There is raw perception as a part 100%.

Is our internal reaction part of the experience? Because each individual, for sure, will extract a different 'experience' from the same perception event.

This tells me our inner narration is an integral part.

[Xonas Pitfall]

It depends semantically on how we define "experience."

Definition: experience
/ɪkˈspɪərɪəns, ɛkˈspɪərɪəns/
Noun

Practical contact with and observation of facts or events.
"He had learned his lesson by painful experience."
Similar:
involvement in, participation in, contact with, acquaintance with, exposure to, observation of, awareness of, familiarity with, conversance with, understanding of, impression of, insight into

If experience is not equal to being, then we enter the duality framework:
The experiencer and the observed - or the experience itself.

The Self is observing, and the "other" is being observed or experienced.

This can be interpreted in two ways:

• The Self experiencing itself as a fragment (i.e., God fragmenting itself to become limited so it can experience itself from the point of view of the fragment),
• Or, the object/subject/limited fragment experiencing the world through its subjective lens. (This would be the same as a human experiencing breathing, love, the cold sensation, the taste of a strawberry, etc.)

Both definitions essentially point to the same; the difference lies in perspective. One includes the expanded viewpoint of God or pure being, while the other reflects a more limited, "human" interpretation of experience. Nonetheless, it simply means to allow “the other” into your own consciousness, and the amount of consciousness you direct onto the other is the depth of your experience or understanding of the observed.

Consequently, once your consciousness deepens and expands enough, the other ceases to exist - and there is no longer an "experiencer and experience" - but just pure being, or merging with the other/experience. (Kind of like when people on Salvia report becoming the doorknob or a juice box - their depth of consciousness and the "volume" they can hold in their perception expanded so much, they stopped experiencing the inanimate object and became it for eternity.)

This also explains why more limited, constrained egos or human minds might not be able to understand the perspective of another human different from them, because the depth of consciousness or understanding they choose to (or can) bring in is limited. (For example, a person may not be able to understand what it’s like to have gender dysphoria, or to be born in a different culture, religion, etc.)

Hence, you'd say:

Their limited point of view lacks the capacity or willingness to expand consciousness onto another. For example, a religious person may not want to experience what it's like to belong to another religion. As a result, their understanding of the other person remains shallow - they see the other religion as meaningless, confusing, separate, or even wrong.

The more you’re willing to experience, the more you’re able to understand. And the more complexity, variables, and nuance you can take in, the more consciousness you're deploying - deepening the quality/depth of your experience.

From experience comes understanding, and from deeper understanding comes deeper experience. They influence and reinforce one another.

So the progression goes:

1. → Unconsciousness (The subject is not perceiving the object)
2. → Experience (The subject is experiencing the object, but it is separate from it, and perceived through a limited lens of the subject)
3. → Total Being or Union (The subject merges with the object and fully becomes or embodies it)

Now, if you want to redefine experience semantically to include “experiencing what it’s like to be one with another,” you could - but then the original definition of experience, which requires both an experiencer and an observed object, would no longer apply. In the pure state of being, there is no “other” to be observed.

Definitions:

• Experience is to allow “the other” into your consciousness.
• Experience is the act of allowing 'the other' to enter and be held within your consciousness.
• Experience is the process by which consciousness makes contact with phenomena - internal or external - allowing them to be known, felt, or absorbed.
• To experience is to open awareness to the presence of anything - the self, the other, or the space between.

[Aaron p]

Me as God ripping myself in half so I can have sex with a hot girl 

 

[UnbornTao]

On 5/14/2025 at 5:32 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

What do you mean by that word? Who perceives? Perceives what?

I didn't include someone who perceives, by the way, but the act of perceiving. That relates to self which is not the topic at hand.

"Perceives what?" Good question. In our experience we perceive things, so that's hard to deny. Whatever the senses provide is perceived -- what that is, I don't know.

On 5/14/2025 at 5:32 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

Aren't sounds and colors also sensations?

Seem to be more primal or primary than sensation. For example, sensing your body might be slightly different than perceiving it.

On 5/14/2025 at 5:32 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

Let's imagine no sounds, no colors, no sensations, no feelings, what is left? Can there be any experience without these foundational building blocks?

That's the dilemma.  We're asking what experience is, and from that, whether it precedes perception. 

We could question what the experience of Helen Keller would be like, who lost her sight and her hearing. That might point us in the right direction regarding experience. 

On 5/14/2025 at 5:32 PM, Anton Rogachevski said:

I was saying from the start that experience was ineffable and indescribable. 

I feel we got lost in words here a little bit - It's best to define and differentiate all of these from each other to understand what is meant here.

Perhaps that's the case, and we can have insight into its nature. Besides that, this is a tricky subject -- experience, perception, concept. Again, the point with this thread is mostly to promote contemplation.

We could start by refining "perception", which is a mere sensory encounter through the senses. We need to work out this distinction in our experience. By taking a simple object and setting aside all our knowledge about it, we might have a more present and unvarnished encounter with it -- that might be called "perceiving the object." 

[Anton Rogachevski]

9 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

perceiving the object

Do "objects" exist? Where? Is there a duality between perception and the object of perception?

Do you see what I'm getting at? Any statement has built in ontological claims. We should be careful with unexamined claims because we don't actually know for sure all of these.

My premise is that there can't be objects in a the direct experience, but only sensory phenomen.

Edited Friday at 02:16 PM by Anton Rogachevski

[UnbornTao]

On 5/14/2025 at 5:38 PM, Sucuk Ekmek said:

Okay, let's go. Here's what I think:
From a survival perspective, experience is a witness to energy, it's a form of self-reflection and thus comes with knowledge or recognition. I don't think any knowledge is separate from the aesthetic aspect, because humans strive for excellence and that excellence is inseparable from what we perceive as beautiful.
So, we can't just do whatever we like, because where there is recognition there is an aesthetic aspect, or shall we say, concern about our self-reflection.

I have no idea about the fact of experiencing. Fact is something provable, and everything I write here is unprovable or perhaps you mean something different by fact of experiencing.

This is a story. The question is: What is experience? For example, in your experience right now, can you see that you encounter things? You see an object. And within this experience, you can, as if, subtract its name, value, use, which are activities done by you, and so might be called conceptual and are different in nature from a direct experience of the object itself.

[UnbornTao]

Just now, Anton Rogachevski said:

Do "objects" exist? Where?

We really are starting to contemplate everything.  Let's keep the focus on experience.

[Anton Rogachevski]

17 minutes ago, UnbornTao said:

We really are starting to contemplate everything.  Let's keep the focus on experience.

My claim is that in order to reach the basic direct experience we must deconstruct every possible concept about it and relating to the supposed idea of "perception with the senses of objects". - this is an imaginary story and not direct experience.

Go back and see what my original claim is. You ask what is experience and I said "Mu!" That's it, and it's dead serious. Anything else you say about it would automatically be false, cause its nature is that you can't capture it in any finite idea.

If I was the Zen master and you the student and I asked you "What is Experience?" The moment you opened your mouth I would hit you with a stick. Because you can't say anything true about it. : )

Edited Friday at 02:35 PM by Anton Rogachevski

[UnbornTao]

On 5/15/2025 at 1:28 AM, Natasha Tori Maru said:

Hmm, do we think 'experience' is embedded in the story we attribute to it?

There is raw perception as a part 100%.

Is our internal reaction part of the experience? Because each individual, for sure, will extract a different 'experience' from the same perception event.

This tells me our inner narration is an integral part.

What, in our encounter with something, isn't a conceptual or mental activity of ours? For example, when you speak of 'experience', we can distinguish between activities like interpretation, sense-making, and perhaps others. These wouldn't qualify as "direct experience." Say you dislike seafood--so whenever you think about or encounter any kind of seafood, your dislike, your emotional disposition, tends to arise as a single, vague experience, that is, we fail to make a distinction between our relationship with it and our activities and what could be said to be there for itself. What's actually there/here?

And these distinctions must be made experientially, not intellectually, which makes it all the more challenging.

[UnbornTao]

8 minutes ago, Anton Rogachevski said:

My claim is that in order to reach the basic direct experience we must deconstruct every possible concept about it and relating to the supposed idea of "perception with the senses of objects". - this is an imaginary story and not direct experience.

Okay, that sounds reasonable. Will take some time to look into it. In the meantime, you could share what you have in mind. 

---

What is your experience of that? For example, unless it is done as a mere intellectual exercise, it is likely that we live within a solid world and experience, that is, our current experience is in fact "we are here, perceiving objects out there." 

[UnbornTao]

@Xonas Pitfall Take a look at a simple object. You can begin to see things that are applied to it--its name, what it is used for, etc. Without this activity, what is a direct experience of what's there? What is there? Is your perception of it the same as what is there?