Mason Riggle

@Mannyb I've started threads on here before. I love talking about this stuff. 'I' (everything currently being experienced) operate from a paradigm that the 'I who is experiencing my experience' is an illusion (albeit a very persistent one, as Einstein noted, because without the illusion of duality, I don't 'exist'). There is just experience, and whatever this experience is, is True. Current experience is that of a 'me' and a 'you' and a 'forum' where we are talking, but this 'me' is something that is happening, not something that 'does things'. This is always happening now.. There is no 'experiencer of what is happening', there is just 'what is happening'. I have no other self than the totality of current experience, whatever it is, whether I feel like a separate self who experiences experience or not, that is what is true. I don't think my thoughts any more than I grow my hair. Hair is growing. Thoughts are thinking. Experience is experiencing.

@Mannyb Sam's perspective seems to matter to an awful lot of people here, who have some opinion about it. The dream only exists while one is lost in dream. To 'wake up' from the dream is to no longer be lost in it. If you think Sam is real, then you are just as committed to reality as Sam. If you think the characters in your dream are real, you're still dreaming.

@SamueLSD are you open to the idea that Sam Harris is imagimary (and therfor has no real perspective)? He is.

@Mannyb as far as I know Sam has never identified as a Materialist. That's a label that's been assigned to him. He's not even necessarily a 'realist'. He seems perfectly comfortable with the idea that reality might be imaginary. "I might be a brain in a vat". - Sam Harris. His point is that it only 'really' matters, from the 'realist' perspective. From the 'idealist' paradigm, 'mattering' is just an idea.

@Carl-Richard you first. Wake up! ?

@Mannyb if you think Sam is real (material), you are just as lost in materialism as Sam.

@Carl-Richard are your words 'non-dual'?

if you think Sam is real, then you haven't awakened from the dream where he's a character.

@Mannyb both implies duality. They are the same thing, which is why it doesn't matter which it is. There is no 'which it is', as Spira claims.

@Mannyb it only concludes that materialism must be true, for any notion of it being true or false to mean anything. The conversation between characters in a dream only has meaning for those characters within the dream. If one awakens from the dream, one will laugh at itself for thinking the dream (and characters within it) was real.

@Carl-Richard you're here participating. Either you're alone, talking to yourself.. Or there's a you, and a me who you are talking to. 'You' can't convince 'me' it's the former without believing it's the latter.

@Carl-Richard sure. Are they any 'different'? Any 'difference' can only be known relatively (through duality). Oneness means Absolute/Relative is just an imaginary duality which can be transcended by understanding they are the same thing (hence conflating the twoness, into oneness).

@Mannyb I doubt Sam entertains the idea that he is a character in someone else's dream. He is pretty adamant that the self is an illusion, without making any claims about 'who' is the Illustrator. His point is- if there's no 'materialism', then there is no 'you' or 'me' who can be 'convinced' of anything. Without being lost in the dream, there are no characters in the dream.

@Mannyb it would be ridiculous for me to think I'm a character in someone else's dream.

@Mannyb the characters of my dream only exist while I'm in it. To admit of the 'realness' of the characters in my dream is to be lost in the dream.

@Mannyb 'I' could only ever explain it to 'him' while predenting it's not true. This would be tantamount to convincing a character in my dream that they are just a character in my dream.

@Mannyb good thing I'm alone (oneness), and there is no company.

@Mannyb Sam and I agree that it doesn't matter, unless it does.

@Mannyb which again, is Sam's point. This 'limited' contraction (dualism, materialism) is the only paradigm in which this conversation ever 'matters'.

Yes, consciousness must limit itself for there to even be 'something', rather than 'nothing/everything'.

Which has never been done. Who, exactly would recognize this?

How can you have integrated 'oneness' and still believe there is a separate thing called 'Sam Harris'? 'finite minds' only exist when we don't know oneness.

@Mannyb which is what we are all doing whenever we talk to 'each other'.

@Mannyb does he? 'Consciousness is the one thing that can not be an illusion' - Sam Harris 'I might be a brain in a vat' - Sam Harris I don't think he's committed to the notion that the Universe 'exists'.

If you think there's a Sam Harris who doesn't 'get it', that only comes from a place of 'not getting it'.