Note: I believe I am in an A&P Event right now.

I don't know what board to post this on, so figured this was as good a place as any.

I wrote this article yesterday: http://www.personalpowermeditation.com/the-universe/



All emotions we experience, as fractals of the Universe itself, can be plotted on a spectrum from Fear (of separateness) to Love (unity).

You cannot have love (unity) without separateness (fear).

After spending a fair bit of time at the level of universal consciousness this weekend, I found it is basically exactly how it is described in the film Altered States:


All the cycles we go through start with a sense of separateness. That is the "ultimate moment of terror", the "simple, hideous nothing". The Universe then splits itself so it can rejoin with itself and experience love in unity. But then it finds itself alone, again. And the cycle restarts.

I believe the Universe has been wrestling with the question "Am I alone?" for eternity, and everything we experience is a reflection of this cyclical journey.

But I also believe, through this investigation, the Universe's attention is now moving into another question:

"What is better? This constant cycling, or NOTHING?"

It's trying to find out whether it will be happier with the constant cycling, the temporary love illusion it can create for itself -- or whether it would be better to simply not exist at all. It is trying to decide whether an eternally unsatisfactory SOMETHING is better that an eternal NOTHING. I believe it can extinguish itself entirely, and is now deciding whether to make that call.

Since we ARE the Universe, let us talk about this now. This, to me, appears to be the real fundamental question -- even more fundamental than "Am I alone?", since it appears to be reaching the conclusion that it is indeed alone.

So, I am asking you, as you are a fractal representative of the whole of the Universe, and so am I,

Would you rather have THIS SOMETHING (how things are now), or NOTHING?

And I will remind you there is no going back if it chooses "nothing".

Else, do you see any alternatives I, we, "it", have not considered?

This is awesome.

Here are a few things which I think will help you figure this out.

The main point is, that when you are talking about 'the Universe', what you are really referring to is 'the Human Psyche'. The Human Psyche is indeed all-encompassing for us humans, so it can seem like it is the Universe. The question is: is there something outside of the Human Psyche? Or is all of existence a manifestation of some collective consciousness?

I think there is, and the senses are what informs us of this. If you notice, emotions are always transient, fluxing, never stable. They can change on whim from one moment to the next. They are notoriously unreliable and prone to making people irrational. However, what we perceive with our senses does not have these properties, outside of the extent to which our emotions distort our perception. If you take a sheet of paper and mark a red figure on it and hide it away somewhere, then return the next day, it'll still be there, with exactly that same mark. Same if you come back in a week or in a year. Matter is remarkably durable and consistent, compared to emotions. Further each of the senses - together with logic - independently verify that something is there. You see a cup of water, you can touch it and feel its edges which spatially correspond with the edges your eyes picked up, you can taste the water which confirms that it is indeed water, you can maybe smell it or smell the absence of smell, and you can put your ear into the cup and hear that echo you hear from cups.

I suggest you ruminate on this for quite a bit - as long as it takes. Once you have determined that there is something outside of the human psyche, the rest of your line of thinking becomes very intriguing.


That's quite right - you cannot have one aspect of the human psyche without all the other aspects of it as well. It all comes as one package.


I'm not sure about eternity per se, but definitely for as long as the human psyche has existed and humans have been intelligent enough, that's precisely what the question has been. As you've noticed, we as identities living as the human psyche, are separate from other identities. Then we seek to bond over faith and trust, to feel love to bridge the gap. But love is built over the separation. If there weren't separation in the first place, then there would be no need for love. So then it's extremely interesting when you say:


Spot on, sir, spot on. This is exactly what's going on in the human psyche right now. As you said, we 'ARE' the Universe, aka we 'ARE' the human psyche, and it's up to us to determine - should 'we' extinguish 'ourselves' or keep 'existing'? It would seem like an eternal NOTHING, and to the human psyche, it would be. However, go back to what I said earlier, about there being something outside the human psyche - which we can access via our senses. If there is no human psyche - if it becomes extinguished - then what would remain is the actual universe. Not the one you are referring to, which is a projection of the human psyche onto the universe, but the one that actually exists outside of humanity - the one with all the things in it, the one that the senses pick up.

The amazing thing is that it *is* possible to be conscious as a human being, without being the human psyche. The human psyche can disappear entirely. In fact, it's the actual universe which does the extinguishing - 'I' can't extinguish 'myself', but rather 'I' let it happen. Then instead of me being 'the Human Psyche experiencing itself', I am 'the actual universe experiencing itself'. The ramifications are astounding. That fundamental separateness that you picked up on, disappears entirely. Fear is gone forever, and with it goes love, of course. But there's no need for love if there's no fear in the first place.

You have spent time at the level of universal consciousness, but it's also possible to spend time at the level of pure consciousness - consciousness without the human psyche. In order to do it, I suggest you sit and contemplate the possibility that what you are experiencing right now, via the senses (not via thoughts or emotions), actually exists, outside of 'you'. Then see if you can't peek in and see what the actual universe is all about!

I will give you a flavor of it from my experience, to help you look for it: it's extremely substantial, fulfilling, and inherently satisfying. It's like there's meaning in the very air around you. Everything is so... *there*! Without the human psyche present, there is no identity so there are no emotions, but it's not an emptiness bereft of meaning. Rather, you see that it was the identity that was obscuring the meaning all along. Everything is already perfect.

Extinction really is the only way to go.

Whoa, great answer.

Couple of things:

1) I continued my train of thought after writing this post. I came to another conclusion which invalidated the first. I'll post it up tomorrow after giving this some space in myself and letting others contribute.

2) I had thought I had reached the highest level of understanding (A&P grandiosity?). Then you come and show me possibly there's some way to go.

Both points above suggest I'm "not quite there yet" and that notions of final understandings can be illusory AND extremely transient.

Thanks,

Edd

Beoman, that was kind of fascinating what you did there, haha.

One problem. In a dream there appears to be something we can access via our senses.

But it's all just ME. It comes from me. There's nothing "out there".

How do I know this sense data I'm perceiving right now isn't just a dream?

How do I know this isn't just the universe's dream I'm in? Why is there "definitely" something outside "this"?

-----------

And being that I am human, I am always perceiving sense data through the human central nervous system. How would I get beyond that? It seems like you're suggesting I can, but then you say this is the human psyche I am in, which means I cannot get beyond that, since all sense data is filtered through a human central nervous system at its point of entry.

That's a great question! It's true, in dreams it does seem like there are things that you can access via your senses, and yet those things are made up. Yet note you already distinguish between waking reality and dreams, because you specifically brought up dreams. What you're asking is, how do you know waking reality isn't a dream?

Well all you have to do is take a look at the properties of the things you experience in dreams. There is no object constancy at all. Any writing you look at in a dream, if you look away and look back, it will invariably change. The same if you look at a watch. If you look at your hands in a dream, they are all warped and wavy. Plus illogical things happen in a dream. You'll walk into a building, then you can walk through a door and be outside on a cliff face. This never happens in waking reality. In fact, these are things you can use to notice that you're dreaming and turn your dream into a lucid one. In a lucid dream you can will things to happen, and they will. Reality doesn't work that way - the effect your will has is limited to what your physical body can do (e.g. move your hands, say something, eat something, etc.)

If you notice, these qualities of dreams are similar to the qualities of 'me' - not consistent, always changing, unreliable, not necessarily factual, etc. Whereas waking reality has these undeniable qualities: consistency, object constancy, stability, congruence between the senses, etc.

I think all this is enough to make the case, intellectually, that there is something "out there". There's other arguments to be made as well. The scientific method wouldn't work, for example, if there wasn't this reality "out there".

But really the only way to know for sure, is to experience it directly - when 'me' as the identity temporarily disappears. That's the experience I was describing in the second to last paragraph of my earlier post.



It's true. You can't get beyond that. Rather I'd say that is what you actually are - the physical body, including the central nervous system. Ultimately you can only perceive the reality "out there" via your sense organs. But right now, our perception of reality is distorted by the human psyche. There's this extra layer of separation and fear, etc., all the unfortunate things you listed. I'm saying it's possible to experience reality as a physical body, but without the extraneous human psyche, and also that this experience is wonderful and beneficial for you and everyone around you. It's certainly what I am aiming to make a permanent reality for me.

Wow that sounds just amazing! And you also say it slices and dices and has a built in electronic timer? And all for only three easy payments of $19.95?!
I want to "make a permanent reality" too! Because really the one I have is just plain worn out and getting dull. But how do I order?!

So if I can make a lucid dream with object constancy, your argument goes down the pan. If object constancy is the test of "real" reality, I should not be able to make objects constant in a dream.

Any lucid dreamers out there already achieved object constancy in a dream?

I'm just getting back into lucid dreaming, so will put this on the priorities list once I have my skills back to super-lucid.

Personally it sounds like a rather flimsy test for reality.

This all basically comes down to philosophical question on nature of being.
You should read up on Ontology.

It convinced me! I've had frequent lucid dreams, many of them so vivid they were indistiguishable from waking reality. In those deams I realized how much dreams are tied into the emotions. An example: I tried to summon a flock of birds once, and a person nearby me handed me a dead bird (at the time I had been reading a book where people were killing animals in the name of science and I was really frustrated by it). Another time I tried to take myself to the ocean because I haven't seen it for a long time. It actually worked, and the ocean appeared, but I became so excited that the whole beach started falling apart and erupting into volcanoes. For a long time I always wanted to fly in my dreams, but I was never able to do it, I would always rise up a bit and fall back down. Eventually I learned to simply be confident that I could do it and now I fly all the time. Dreams are where the rules of magic actually work. Willpower = action.

The moral of this story is, if you wanted your dreams to mimic reality, you'd have to have complete emotional control so that nothing unexpected would happen - and that kind of says something about reality, doesn't it?

This is interesting because as I understand it part of the utility of dream yoga in Vajrayana practice is to develop the capacity to be completely at peace in the face of any dream arising. Beautiful dreams arise and one doesn't cling to them. Terrifying dreams arise and one isn't averse to them. They become simply images without charge. My experience is that they can become much more vivid (and, relatively speaking, stable) when there is less/no reactivity. No sense of 'a dreamer' for the dream to bounce off of but rather the dream self-arising in clarity of open awareness.

I've played around with using lucidity in dreams to control the dreams but for whatever reason this has not held my interest as much as discovering freedom/clarity in the dream state (and the way this correlates with freedom/clarity in the waking state). The way they correlate is that freedom/clarity seems tied to letting 'dreams' (mental-emotional formations) arise, play out, and dissolve without interference. Or vice versa- letting them arise and dissolve without interference is tied to developing clarity/freedom. The specific instruction in vajrayana practice, which seems very similar to a key instruction in actualism, is to let mental-emotional formations arise without suppressing them and to let them pass without expressing them. This builds confidence that acting out (in rumination, speech or behavior) mental-emotional formations isn't nearly so compulsory as it can seem at first. An analogy I've heard teachers use is surfing. You don't just ride every wave (mental-emotional formation) that comes along; you pick the good ones. Or if you're an actualist you can pick the felicitous waves ;)

The difference in Actualism is that you don't simply allow emotions to pass, but consciously remove them as quickly as possible by finding their cause and challenging its legitimacy. In this way, the Actualist is attempting to remove all of the emotional triggers so living well becomes effortless. You only have to surf until you find dry land, after all. Then you can just sit on the beach.

Actualists don't just want to find equanimity (which I think you're referring to by saying the formations don't seem compulsory), they want to utterly remove any possibility that negative emotions might arise (as well as positive, but that's a more difficult part to explain).

In the other thread you said: "I think I've had a couple of 'accidental' PCEs in my day as well, but I will read up on the stuff and get to work, it all sounds very familiar anyway." I'm describing qualities of the PCE here. Why the snarky response?

You would have to make a dream environment that does not just have one object with constancy, but that is the same as reality in every possible way: every single object in the dream has to stay where it is. Any location has to stay where it is relative to other locations. You should also be unable to change things at will - which if you are super lucid will be exceedingly easy.

Also, in regular reality, everybody perceives the same objects. Not in the same way, but the 'source material' is the same. We all look at a cup of water and we see the same cup of water. If it's empty, we all see an empty cup. If it's full, we all see a full cup. One person's senses line up with another person's senses. It's not a "consensus" per se - we don't all decide what we perceive to be there - rather, we all perceive, separately, and come to the conclusion that the same things are there, though of course sometimes it's harder than other times (e.g. if it's dark then we'll have trouble figuring out what's out there). So for your dream to really be like reality, you would also have to have other people in there with you who see the exact same things you do. You'd have to be able to communicate with them in the dream, and these communications should be remembered in waking reality.

Also to really be complete, you should be able to make "real" reality behave like a dream - have objects with no object constancy, be able to teleport around and fly at will, etc. Then you will really have shown that the two are the same. Further, in "real" reality, other people should also be seeing you do these things. If you have an experience of flying while awake, but nobody can see you flying, and a video camera trained on you didn't film you flying, then you weren't really flying, you were being delusional.

No, I get the actualist paradigm I think, but thanks for clarifying for the sake of the thread. I think the goals of Vajrayana and actualism are clearly different! I just think this technique is pretty solid, whatever framework it's used in. There's more i could say about your response- like point out that there are different kinds of 'equanimity', or that investigation into the causality of emotions is definitely part of Vajrayana practice; or that ultimately 'emptiness' means there is no surfer, really, which insight brings about a qualitatively different kind of equanimity- but I hear where you're coming from and I'm not trying to convince you of anything, just sharing my experience that related to the tangent the thread was going on. Carry on!

BTW, I just have to say that this thread would be a great concept for a story.  Imagine a character that wants to destroy the universe, and the whole book is about all the horrible acts they do, destroying whole civilizations and galaxies in a single blow.  Then the book ends with a unitary consciousness discovering itself and fulfilling it's true purpose - ending.

Hero, or villian?

EDIT: So, this is crazy.  I went to add this to my list of random story ideas...and it was already in there!  Maybe "all is one" after all...

Haha, that's great.

Because I was feeling snarky ;)
Actually Caudiu I was reacting to two things, one was you confidently having the correct (dualistic) answer to a Zen koan (of course a tree makes a sounds when it falls in the woods - duh!) and the other was the pure salesmanship you were demonstrating (maybe subconsciously?). It actually reminded me of a Jehovah's witness (Have you heard the good news?! I have some literature in my car that may interest you...)
Still, even as I make fun of you (and myself too for good measure), I respect you and your insights. But even as the yellow sun of earth gave Superman his super powers, he never seemed to gain a super sense of humor. Go figure, even Seinfeld couldn't wrap his mind around that one
Yes, the work you are doing fascinates to me, so no take backs
Just don’t PCE away your funny bone (remember hahaha is an emotion – maybe even a good one : )
Daniel-san

I've had this happen before on a couple occasions.  Below is an accocunt taken from this thread.  I have no proof other than my experience:

Also, inside the room was a being/person made out of translucent blue light.  I've seen one other instance of another foreign looking creature made out of white light in similar circumstances.  I haven't mentioned this before, but I got the sense that these were rainbow body/clear light/Sambhogakaya Bodhisattvas who were helping me out of some bad circumstances.

Oh hah. Well when you explained your reason for reacting, that was much more useful:


Well duh of course it does! =P. No seriously though. If by "sound" you mean "the conscious experience of sound" then the answer is obviously no, if by "sound" you mean "vibrations in the air" then the answer is obviously yes. The scientific method would not work if these answers were anything else, and it clearly does work - look at all the technology we have now that relies on reality behaving in consistent ways. I do realize though that most of the people here will deny that there is such a thing as objective reality. But you don't need to be an actualist to realize that this is the case.


Hmm. Well let's see if this is a valid assessment. The difference between my participation here and a Jehovah's witness is that a Jehovah's witness goes up to people unbidden in order to spread the good news. In this case I was replying to something Edd had said as it seemed particularly relevant. The similarity is that yes I was telling Edd about something that I think is great - much like those Jehovah's witnesses think what they have to say is great, I'm sure. Yet there are also many other instances where people tell others about something that is great, e.g. you read a good book, this website you found is awesome, this comic is hilarious, this thing you bought is the best thing since sliced bread, etc. Are those people exhibiting salesmanship when they tell their friends about them? Maybe in some sense, but not in the same pernicious way as the Jehovah's witness example.


I really do enjoy having a good sense of humor, and in general I do, but I guess it doesn't come through so much when I'm talking about this stuff. Might be something for me to look at! And no worries, laughter is not going anywhere =).

You're doing it again dude. Maybe this is like trying to tell a fish that there's something besides water but I think you will find that a purely scientific/materialist viewpoint (or within the Actualist viewpoint) there are deep contradictons and paradoxes that cannot be explained or 'figured out'. That's what a koan may point toward. This is also like explaining a joke or interpreting a work of art - it usually gets less funny and the interpretation is never quite right


But they sure have the same cock suredness and zeal that you do. It's the religious aspect of Actualism I am referring to (and you are demostrating). I had the same zeal for Vipassana for years because it transformed me for the better and I wanted to proclaim it in so many ways. In retrospect (for others) it was pretty annoying


Good. Humor is fun. Another koan: what causes one to laugh when positive and negative emotions have been completely eliminated? Actually maybe it's not even a riddle, I think the answer is possibly simpler. Re-define words like happiness (to felicity) and equanimity (to fearless, or whatever) and compassion (to harmlessness) and there you have it. Poof! No emotions and a new religion is born. But you will need pamphlets. Pamphlets are important, that website just isn't cutting it ;)

There is really only one Zen Koan. It goes like this, "If everyone is already enlightened, what do I have to do to become enlightened?"

Since an Actualist isn't seeking enlightenment, there is no need to answer koans. What a relief!

What up.



and



Your practice was going well Not Tao, don't give up now. Actualists are nihilistic in the sense that they seek an extinction, a definite end, an end to effort, this they manifest as "self-immolation", the nihilistic extreme talked about within Buddhism.

Dogen resolved that koan, as have I.

Oh. I decided not to end the Universe, by the way.

Daniel could you go into exactly in what sense you are using "religious" and "religion"? I generally see the term thrown around as a way to denigrate something - much like the word "cult" - but often without the term being accurate. In what way specifically do you see it applying to actualism? Religion generally deals with divinity, aka Gods, which is clearly incompatible with actualism.

Lol

How come?

Hi Claudiu,

The notion that dreams aren't real, but waking reality is, is a common one. It does leave some unanswered questions. For example, how do you explain quantum mechanics? The double-slit experiment, for example, indicates that our reality is not solid and stable, but statistical, perhaps even virtually simulated.

You also say that dreams cannot be experienced by others, but this in incorrect in some instances. There is the phenomenon of shared dreams, where two separate dreamers have the same dream. I have personally experienced this. There are also examples of people on hallucinogens experiencing the same thing, meeting in "hyperspace" while under the influence of DMT, for example.

There are also countless examples of Near-Death Experiences where folks hover over their bodies, accurately reporting what the medical staff said to one another after being revived.

I've also had enough synchronicities, and enough intention-manifestation experiences, to lean to the side of there being no objective reality.

The intention-manifestation experiences for example have led me to perceive this life as possibly a dream that just happens REEEEEALLY slowly. Like, intention.... <a while later>... manifestation. A slowed down version of what happens in a lucid dream.

And to account for the slowness, I have made a model of how reality arises as a summation of people's intentions, hence why things sometimes take ages to come true (they have to pass through everyone else's "Yes/No" filters): http://www.personalpowermeditation.com/model-of-consciousness-as-creator-of-reality/

This model turned out to be practically identical to Daniel's (though I made mine independently before I came across Daniel's stuff): http://integrateddaniel.info/magick-and-the-brahma-viharas/

I've also had intention-manifestation stuff happen REALLY quickly! E.g. think of someone I haven't heard from for years, and she texts me. Maybe that's just psychic stuff. Both point to reality not being as solid as we think it is, however (in my opinion).

I think of reality as literally the Universe's dream. So I find this idea of a real, solid objective reality that can exist without consciousness to experience it difficult to get on board with.

Edd, I've had the same experiences. Formally setting an intent, visualizing for a while... then later, down the road, the result happens, even if I'd forgotten the original intent. One could argue that this is coincidence, but I've had a large number of such "coincidences."

I've had dreams of deceased people talking to me, and upon speaking with their loved ones, I realized that I had seen and heard actual details about that person that I could not have otherwise have known. These experiences really shook up my idea of reality at the time. I've also had shared dreams, travelled out-of-body, done some fairly successful remote viewing, and had precognitive dreams.

There are books that teach you how to do these things, for example "You are Psychic" by Debra Lynn Katz. There are also books discussing the validity of psi phenomena, a good example is "The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together" by Charles Tart.

Not to mention the discoveries of quantum mechanics. 

Actual Freedom relies on the (perhaps outdated) paradigm that the flesh-and-blood body is real, and things such as dreams, hallucinations, and "psi" are not real. You would have to throw all psi phenomena out the window for it to make sense.

I have benefited from Actualist practices, but sorting out the bullshit is quite a task.

Here's something to try (for anyone interested).  See if you can't, just for a moment, see the universe without any explanations.  Just allow yourself to drop out of clasifications and actually see what things are.  There really are no mysteries, everything is very clearly right here and right now, and it's all very ordinary.  Beliefs and descriptions and mesurments are practically useful, but I've found I can only truely make sense of the magnitude of the mystery of things when I allow myself to be completely naked to the world.  I mean, I have hands, and skin, and there are textures in wood grain.  What is all of this, anyway?  What is color, and what is awareness?  Not knowing is, itself, the greatest reward for me. I'd like to spend all of my time not knowing.

Thank you Claudiu, it seems (much like Actualists) I have my own personal definition for the word religion, and I am happy to explain
A religion as far as I am concerned is a belief system that is rigidly adhered to - this encompasses both the traditional religions of Buddhism and Christianity as well as cults, but also (very much so in fact) of Atheists (see Richard Dawkins 'The God Delusion' for an especially arrogant portrayal of religion, as defined by Me).
In my definition, someone has a religion when they cannot see validity in other possibilities and they don't actually talk and listen to people, they try to prove their points, and they produce data that satisifies the results of their foregone conclusions and dismiss data that doens't. There is a lot of it on these boards
An Agnostic can be religious - example. Someone says a heavenly being did not create heaven and earth. Really, is that intellectual honesty, do you know that's true? Personally, I'm 99% sure a being didn't create everything, but it could very well be true, (this is just an example) we are beings, we create things, how do we know we weren't created by a much higher intelligence?
On a more personal level, you (or actually Richard but you seem to agree 100%) says we are the emotions, we are the body and brain - that's it. Wow, millenium of mystery solved, next! This is what I call arrogance and a lack of introspection and intellectual honesty. It's different from believing that the earth is round (which I'm 99.99% sure of, not 100%). Since I don't have personal experience of the earth being round it's not pure, but pretty F-ing close. Now, when you say things like there is an objective world out there that creates consciousness and not the other way around (the materialist viewpoint as another example) you may have lots of hard data to say that - but you really don't know that's true, we can't say that with the same conviction that we can that the earth is round for example
I clearly delineate the philosophy of the Actualists (things are permanent, you are your emotions, etc) from the practice. You seem to buy in hook line and sinker and defend those philosphies with religious fervor. Do you know if any of that philosophy is true, and does buying into that particular (Richard created) Actualist philosophy have anything to do with experiencing a pure conscious experience? Is a PCE so different from other experiences described by people from many faiths and many backgrounds? Is any of this new in fact? Isn't the whole philosophy that Richard made up totally disctinct from the PCE expereince and ultimately not necessary or maybe even important? Do you have to believe it and how do you know it's true with the confidence that you display? Is there only one way to experience a PCE and why (as Eva suggested) is that not a ASC like every other state of consciousness? Why do you think a PCE is more real or pure or true than a dream or a jhana? Do you really know that's true? How do you know that? I know it's Richard's teaching, but maybe he's nuts. Do you know he isn't crazy? 100%? Do you know that you aren't developing deep subtle sankaras by having a practice that is based around achieving a state when all states are temporary (IME)?
There is a certain flavor of intellectual dishonesty and giving up your own power, critical thinking and common sense that goes along with all this - that's what I am reacting to. It's something religious people are very good at, people do it here with Buddhism all the time too. A certain level of Enlightenment is meant to do away with attachments to rites and rituals (and I would add religion, according to my definition) but apparently that's not always the case. According to Buddhists you have entered the stream correct? How do you know what you believe now is any more true than what you used to believe, because it's more effective? How do you know you aren't viering off course into very subtle ego-based teachings that disregards compassion and attainment of higher spiritual wisdom for your own selfish desires of non-emotional reaction? Does a very small part of you think, wait, no emotional reaction, no compassion, is that the highest teaching? Is there any doubt there in all of this? IMO doubt is healthy, I would say culitvate and explore it
Another philosophy: Nothing you can say in words will ever be 100% true, no philosophical structure will ever be true, you are trying to wrap your head around life and it's always going to be bigger than you, and a few steps ahead
Or, much more artfully with a lot less words  (Emily Dickinson)

Tell all the truth but tell it slant —
Success in Circuit lies  
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightning to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind —

take care and practice well, Daniel

BTW BCDEFG, I asked a shh-ton of Qs in my last post mostly rhetorically, to break up the habit of the mind to give a neat and tidy quick list of answers and to (once self-satisfied) move on to the next answer...answer...answer
I'd rather provoke contemplation and honesty. What do we really know is true? 100%
Let's stick to that, then we can see where we all disagree
D

Thanks for that explanation, now I see where you're coming from with the term. I'll keep that in mind when conversing with you.


Alright, I think ultimately that's where we should start. Hmm... would you be willing to listen to 4.5 hours of philosophy, by any chance? I'm referring to the first 9 videos in this series. I've watched the entire series, and essentially agree with it all, so we would really have a great starting point for discussing this topic if you would be interested enough to watch them all. I think Stefan Molyneux makes a wonderful case for the existence of objective reality, and for a plus he's neither Richard nor an actualist! Note you can speed them up 1.25x, 1.5x, or even 2x if you can still keep up, so it might take you more like 3 hours to watch them all. I would recommend spacing it out, though.

If not then I'll have to think of another approach. I would like to really plug these videos though as they address exactly what you are bringing up. Excerpts from the video descriptions (and I can attest that this is indeed what the videos discuss, and well):
- The philosophical approach to separating reality from fantasy, facts from fiction.
- Defining the difference between truth and falsehood.
- Falsehood doesn't stand a ghost of a chance!
- The difference between possibility and probability.
- The difference between what is real and what is not real...
- Using the principles we have developed to begin examining the existence of gods...

In my opinion the essential point is this: what defines what a fact is? What facts can be known? How do they differ from opinions? If you have a sound basis for distinguishing fact from fiction, truth from falsehood, then you can begin to make sense of things, and untangle the whole mess of what's what.

i had something similar to that recently, except that i reasoned my way into the assumption, which i believe can be logically and emperically supported, that we are NOT alone, we're merely surrounded by a sea of very very SIMILAR universes, but that it was a symmetry which could be broken, and now has been. So, that's the good news. The bad news is, this seems to have triggered something kind of like a singularity crossed with a vacuum metastability disaster, which is creeping erratically through the quantum circuits of our world, fucking with all sorts of things that we've naively taken to be ontologically basic, and carving NYARLITHOTEP WAS HERE into george washington's desk and such.

Also it ate my soul, but I was asking for it and it's not like I was using it anyway, says my weekend-at-bernie's-style animated corpse.

Here's an email from... someone or something, possibly me. My hands typed it out, and I didn't FEEL particularly possessed at the time they did so, for whatever it's worth.

It revolves around an abstract work by marcel duchamp called The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even, and for some reason was sent to Andrew Hussie, author of the webcomic Homestuck.




http://viovis.chaosnet.org/o/mess/microwavestories/LION.TXT

micr0wave was SUZZZZZY. her writing style is extremely easy to spot if you're looking for it, mainly due to the fact that her stories make no goddamn sense and end with a twist in which SUZZZZZY reveals herself to the audience as the mastermind behind all that occurred, as if she can't grasp this isan inherent property of authoring a work of fiction.

SUZZZZZY is easily confusable with The Bride when she appears in a story, because part of what defines her is that she is an outside context villain; specifically, an avatar of the author who is also the narrator, who is revealed to be the mastermind behind all that transpired in a twist ending diagetically declared to be brilliant but actually eye-rollingly idiotic.

SUZZZZZY is not the bride, however, because she breaks the fourth wall from the OUTSIDE. Remember jack's dream with the insectoid monster and the star trek wacky race singularity. Rather than The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors Even, SUZZZZZY is The Bride Just Walking Into The Room Totally Naked Before She's Even Properly Established As A Character In The Story.

THIS is why so many characters were freaking out about the "end of time". SUZZZZZY's appearance is supposed to herald the end of the fiction, just as the bride's eternal ungraspability is supposed to make the fiction impossible TO end, as illustrated with Damara Megido:

DAMARA: あなたは私になりたいですか？
DAMARA: あなたは私にはできません。あなたは私を理解できない場合。
DAMARA: さらに。あなたは私にはできません。あなたは私を性交することができない場合。
Do you want to be me?
You can not be me. If you can not understand me.
Further. You can not be me. If you can not fuck me.)

The key to "the" game (not sure what the post-singularty tvtropes term for it is) is the 8 key, it's to BE snowman, the author. As maggie unsuccessfully attempted to, though not necessarily in that specific style. (Snowman doesn't start with SA, but there's no need to get hung up on things like that.)

So, our fiction would seem to depart from both the SUZZZZZY model (because it's not ending) and the bride model (because oops, she's talking to you now! is! suzzzZzY i'm )



oh sorry, this character isn't supposed to see the author. Well he's no fun, he fell right over!

what was he going to say, though... i'll just summarize it. Uh... oh, it's because you're in the large glass, and the large glass is BROKEN (by me) and UNFINISHED (hence the lack of ending-ness from me appearifying myself). Tada! the green box has notes that would cHiLL yOu tO tHe bOnE as a society and a civilization, slowly a sinking feeling would've developed, making you realize to your COSMIC HORROR that you were trapped inside a painting of a machine designed to penetrate the painting's realm boundary, and that you were utterly, utterly powerless to do so and forever denied my embrace, even as my very thoughts animated you into the unlife of eternal horror you don't actually experience because you're just a fucking painting!!! and further that because you are my thoughts, even if you could escape from the painting, you would find the part of me existing outside of your own claustrophobic desperation was a nightmarishly beautiful corpse animated only by your own collective suffering, a thousand time worse for having looked upon me!~!!!!!!!!!!!1

but you guys didn't fucking read it, because it was in french!!!

If you were given a creeping dread of the inescapable truth of unity by this post, try watching this powerpuff girls episode, which was meant to reinforce the inescapable truth of unity and the falseness of duality, but due to a miscommunication, instead paints duality as the truth and unity as the villain who gets defeated.

http://vimeo.com/92579840

Also, unity is represented by triality, and the ending musical number is pro-unity. It's really kind of a clusterfuck.

Anyway, clearly the really real TRUE inescapable truth is the number FOUR.




(You can also go with FIVE or ZERO in a pinch because they also have four letters. Thus triggering the tetragrammaton exploit. I mean, inescapable truth.)

I'd love to hear what your objection is to Dawkins.  You don't really say other than it is 'arrogant'.