Solipsism as a hallmark of consciousness

[Carl-Richard]

Teachers who talk very little (while initially having the heart in the right place, end up thinking very little and perhaps not making things clear enough, giving out clues but not carrying the students through the clues to the end and leaving them confused) are ironically complicit in spreading the solipsism bug.

A student will ask a question "what is consciousness? What is the Absolute truth?", the teacher will say "This!" and just lift their hands and look around. Then the student asks "but what is this?". And the teacher answers "just this" and smiles. And the student might conclude that "this" is just their sensory experience, and hence solipsism might arise, but the teacher actually refers to the recognition of your true nature as pure ever-lasting presence.

The thing about your true nature, the Absolute, is it has existed since before you were born. Now, imagine how ridiculous it is realizing you were never actually born and then you start talking about that the human experience you have now is actually what is the most real thing. It's like you're experiencing the most extreme form of amnesia, forgetting completely where you came from before all these human stories, perceptions, thoughts, ideas about minds and other minds.

It's not just that you saw the Sun and now you retreated back to the cave of shadows. It's that you were a Supernova, but you forgot all about it.

Edited 3 hours ago by Carl-Richard

[Nemra]

@Carl-Richard, if the absolute is beyond death, doesn't that make it the only thing that has ever been, thus making the absolute solipsistic?

[Carl-Richard]

28 minutes ago, Nemra said:

@Carl-Richard, if the absolute is beyond death, doesn't that make it the only thing that has ever been, thus making the absolute solipsistic?

I'm specifically saying the solipsism of taking your finite limited experience as a human (and only it) as Absolute, is what doesn't work. If you want to say that the aloneness of the great beyond or perfect ultimate presence is solipsistic, that's fine, but that is usually not what solipsists want to do. They want to pull it into the human realm. They want to talk about "other human minds" and such topics.

Their focus is interestingly very human, perhaps because that is where their identification (and attachments and fears) lies. What strikes me is you will (to my knowledge) never find an Enlightened (not merely awakened) person obsessing about the ontological status of other human minds. It's only those who are awakened (or parroting those awakened or enlightened) who are still (most of the time) identified with their finite mind that go into these weird obsessions and neuroses.

If you ask an Enlightened person "do you think other minds exist?", they will be like "what? Not even your own mind exists. What are you so concerned about? See that you were always dead, nobody was alive, it was all a show, including you and your story".

Edited 1 hour ago by Carl-Richard

[Nemra]

@Carl-Richard, isn't the human experience actual?

I agree that the human experience is limited in the sense that it will end someday and it has a structure.

When people say that this experience is all there is, I think they are trying to say that whatever exists is. It would be false to say otherwise.

31 minutes ago, Carl-Richard said:

If you ask an Enlightened person "do you think other minds exist?", they will be like "what? Not even your own mind exists. What are you so concerned about? See that you were always dead, nobody was alive, it was all a show, including you and your story".

Do you know what they mean by "mind".

Edited 1 hour ago by Nemra