Perceptions And Nature Of Reality

[momo]

“The world that is considered to exist independent of perception and of which each of our perceptions is considered to be a single, partial view, has never been experienced. There is no evidence for its existence”

I can see how the world independent of perception is never experienced, but it’s effects are, so isn’t that evidence of its existence? For example, if it rains when I am sleeping, I am not experiencing it, but when I wake up the grass is wet and there are puddles everyone. So rain happened even if I was not there to experience it. So my question is, aren’t the effects of something evidence that it happened? Thank-you for offering some clarity on this point.

[Haumea]

Ramana Maharshi, paraphrased:

There is No World. There Is Only The Self.

Edited August 17, 2017 by Haumea

[TimStr]

Objective causality starts to break down if you break down your minds tendency to rationalize and conceptualize.

If you say, that it must have rained at night, because the ground is wet, that seems true for you, because your mind is used to think that way. It's because the concept rain exists in your thinking. Try to imagine how your world would be if that wasn't the case. How would your world be without the concept of rain? How would it be with no concepts at all? The fact, that it might be hard to imagine shows you, that you're stuck in this way of thinking. Your stuck in your concept of reality and unable to see it for what it actually is.

Now it may be useful to conceptualize to some degree in order to function in the ordinary world, but conceptualizing gets in the way of truth seeking. 

[momo]

the grass is wet ===> it rained !!! that's fucking obvious

[momo]

@Leo Gura can you answer please

[30secs]

@momo I can say yes, it rained.. under your mind dimension. The Truth is beyond mind, if your brain is destroyed it doesn't mean the Truth/Consciousness  is also gone. That is to say Consciousness cannot use that mind/brain to enter this dimension(hey! it rained). In this worldly reality, yes its really raining same as when you have a dream. But it stops when you begin conscious. 

Edited August 18, 2017 by 30secs

[Leo Gura]

3 hours ago, momo said:

the grass is wet ===> it rained !!! that's fucking obvious

Nothing in this work is obvious.

The grass is wet = the grass is wet. Nothing more, nothing less. Notice the rest is monkey-mind.

What you're calling "evidence" IS what you're imagining to be the "the world independent of perception". You're looking too far. The world IS the flux of perception. Look! That's what it is! Stop looking for something else. The reason you do that is because you secretly do not want to admit that the world is mystical. You keep looking for a mechanism, not realizing that the mechanism is simply its being.

BEing is all there could ever be. It is itself. Period.

A = A

It's so obvious you're overlooking it.

[Telepresent]

On 17/08/2017 at 2:04 AM, momo said:

For example, if it rains when I am sleeping, I am not experiencing it, but when I wake up the grass is wet and there are puddles everyone. So rain happened even if I was not there to experience it.

Let's use VR as a way of approaching this.  In a virtual reality, the only things that 'exist' are 1) the underlying code, and 2) the output of image/sound/etc that compose the virtual world.  When you see something, it exists as output.  When you turn away from it, it only exists as potential, in the code (in other words, it's not there when you turn away - there isn't a world beyond what is created through the visual and sound outputs). 

Now, let's say you spend a week living in a VR environment.  One day, the weather is nice and sunny. You go to sleep (which involves the screen going black for 8 hours), and when you wake up, the ground is wet with puddles everywhere.  "Ah!" you think, "it rained last night."  Only... it didn't, did it?  Because the only OUTPUT was the black screen.  There was no 'there' for 'it' to rain on.  There was no 'it' to do the raining.  There was only the output of a wet floor, and you mentally filled in the gaps.

Also, note that it didn't rain in the code, either.  There may have been a line in the code that says 'on morning X, the floor will be wet', but there was no physical rain, or codified rain, taking place anywhere.  Only the output of 'wet'.  Because it didn't need to rain anywhere - it only needed to be wet the next morning.

And this is the problem with trying to use sensory phenomena to try to prove an objective reality.  Just because it has a consistency of behaviour, doesn't and cannot prove the solid objectivity of a physical system.  We're deeply deeply used to interpreting our sense data this way, and we tend to use consistency and our understanding of cause-and-effect to 'prove' the solidity of the world, but when you really look at it, you can't.  You just can't.

[Visitor]

@momo Reality is something that is true, but our mind, a by-product of brain activity is not something we can point at and say "look, there is the mind". However all our thoughts and perceptions come from what we cannot point at. So we can never really tell for certain. All I can say is that our reality is totally assembled by the mind.

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

@momo Yes, the grass is wet because it rained when you were comfortably sleeping in your bed. The world was still there too (what a surprise!)! There is so much more to consciousness - or the world -  other than our individual perceptions. 

Realism is entails that objects exist independent of consciousness/mind. That is impossible to prove since all that is ever known is mind. BUT, where is consciousness? Where is mind? If non-duality is correct, consciousness is infinite. To think that if you go to sleep the world disappears is to equate your own individual perception with the totality of mind/consciousness. See how egocentric this view is?

Just notice that is not the body, nor the eyes that are aware. Consciousness is aware, and that is a big distinction to make.

Edited August 18, 2017 by Juan Cruz Giusto

[Echoes]

@momo When you dream and the grass is wet, does it mean it actually rained in the dreamed world before? When you leave the dream, where has the dream taken place? The occurence of the dream is not localizable in physical space. In the dream you where in berlin. when you woke up from the dream, where did the whole dream world go? It appeared "in" a non-localizable consciousness and was made out of nothing. The ego makes a false distinction between a dream and "ordinary reality" to defend it's assumed existence and constructed safety-net of a personal life story, and to avoid recognizing the unbearable reality of it's utter non-being, not knowing, and meaninglessness

[momo]

7 hours ago, Juan Cruz Giusto said:

@momo Yes, the grass is wet because it rained when you were comfortably sleeping in your bed. The world was still there too (what a surprise!)! There is so much more to consciousness - or the world -  other than our individual perceptions. 

Realism is entails that objects exist independent of consciousness/mind. That is impossible to prove since all that is ever known is mind. BUT, where is consciousness? Where is mind? If non-duality is correct, consciousness is infinite. To think that if you go to sleep the world disappears is to equate your own individual perception with the totality of mind/consciousness. See how egocentric this view is?

Just notice that is not the body, nor the eyes that are aware. Consciousness is aware, and that is a big distinction to make.

seems legit but all the comments here say that if you go to sleep the world disappears!!!

[Juan Cruz Giusto]

@momo  You will have to think for yourself and decide what is closer to your experience and what makes sense to you... 

[Telepresent]

5 hours ago, momo said:

seems legit but all the comments here say that if you go to sleep the world disappears!!!

I quite like what Jed McKenna says here, when talking about what we can know for sure. First the student says "So I know I'm sitting here..." to which he replies "No, you only know 'I am'. The rest is taken on faith." She replies "OK, so I'm not sitting here..." "No, you don't know that either. All of this doesn't mean that everything isn't, just that it's unverifiable."

Trying to make any definitive statement based purely on our limited personal perspective is a big problem. Now, there is a lot that we tend to believe about ourselves that can be debunked with some deeply honest questioning, and there are some inconsistencies in our communal understanding of what we are and the way the world works which can help to highlight some of these questions. But you have to do it for yourself, I'm afraid. It's one of those cases where you can't be given the answer, you have to do the maths

[Leo Gura]

11 hours ago, momo said:

seems legit but all the comments here say that if you go to sleep the world disappears!!!

Lol, if it didn't disappear, in what sense could you go to sleep? It would keep you up all night

Stop treating reality as an abstraction. Reality -- as far as you know -- is only what is experienced right this moment.

[PetarKa]

9 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Reality -- as far as you know -- is only what is experienced right this moment.

This ^^^!

Even the "past" and the "future" don't exist. The only things that exist are memories of the past and expectations / ideas about the future. But those things are always happening IN THE PRESENT MOMENT.