Mason Riggle

@Mh1781 God is 'pretending' it's not Everything/Nothing so it can seem like Something. God is pretending to be me and you. When Leo says, 'you are imagining others to keep yourself asleep' what is really meant is "God is imagining all of this so that it can seem like something, rather than Everything/Nothing, which doesn't seem like anything. Let's say you go to sleep tonight and have a very vivid dream where you are at a party talking to some people.. within this dream, you start to recognize that maybe you are dreaming.. is the 'you who is talking to the other people in your dream and recognizing the dream' the one who is dreaming? While you are dreaming (while God is pretending not to be God), even if the dream seems like lots of different people and things.. it's just the one dream.

@Someone here The phrase 'outside the mind' makes no sense to me.

@WokeBloke this is why people say 'It's all me'.. or Everything is God.. or 'it's all One' or 'I am God' or 'God is One' or 'There is no separation' or 'Reality is non-dual'.. There is no such thing as an experiencer that has no experience.. or an experience with no experiencer, because they are not two different things. Call it whatever you like.. experience, experiencer.. same thing.

@Someone here what evidence will you use to verify your evidence? If I'm dreaming of a table, and in this dream I can see the table, and I can set things on it.. is that enough evidence to conclude that the table exists, or to examine it further?

@Someone here "Self" is self evident.. it's not evident that there's anything 'else'.

@Nivsch I don't seem to have much choice. How do I know what's REAL other than by how it seems?

@WokeBloke no.. I'm saying there's no difference.. YOU are saying 'the experiencer is experiencing itself'. I'm saying 'experiencer' and 'the experience' are not two different things.

@WokeBloke because it makes it difficult to talk about something that has no opposite. If everything felt good, and there was no bad feeling, how would you tell other people about it? How could you describe it to yourself, or 'know it'? How does this massage feel? It feels good. What does 'good' mean if there's nothing to contrast it against?

@Mh1781 do you think 'God' can have the singular experience of having multiple experiences? 'Foundation of reality' is dualistic language, which implies 'a reality' AND a 'foundation of reality' which exists 'separate from reality'. Consciousness IS reality. Reality is REAL only because it seems that way. You are reality. I think (seem to be) therefor I am. Seeming to Be and Being are the same thing. There isn't really any 'imagining' separate from 'what is being imagined'.. they are the same thing.

@LastThursday not two. not separate.

@Nivsch I don't seem to be alone. I seem to be talking to you. It only matters to me how things seem. If I seem to be on fire, it doesn't matter to me that I'm not..

@Nivsch but it literally doesn't make any difference if it's true or not. Whether you really exist, or if you only just seem to really exist to me.. there's no difference from my perspective, the only one I have available to me.

"State of Being is All That Matters" I like to read this sentence such that 'Mattering' is something that 'State of Being' is doing..

@WokeBloke can you really just not grasp non-duality? The front and back of a coin are not two different things, even though they seem different. Both are 'the whole coin', and front (as a reference) is just relative to back. Front and back are not two separate things. You can't have 'just the front' of a coin'.. or 'just the back of a coin'. Front only 'exists' relative to 'back' and vice versa. 'Experiencer' only 'exists' relative to 'that which is being experienced'.. it seems like two distinct things, but it's possible for this separation to collapse, such that there is no distinction.

@Someone here I don't see how it makes any difference. If I'm dreaming right now, but I can't tell I'm dreaming, this is exactly the same to me as 'being awake'.

@LastThursday sure.. it's sloppy language. 'Self' and 'the experience of being a self' are not two separate things. There isn't really 'A self' AND 'the experience that self is having'. Dualistic language creates the illusion of separation.

@Someone here do you agree that it doesn't make any difference AT ALL which of the following is true?? 1) You are a brain in a Vat, hallucinating all this, and none of it is REAL, it just REALLY seems that way. 2) All of this is REAL.

@LastThursday @Someone here The 'brain in a vat' thought experiment shows you that the only thing you can be certain of is 'experience itself'. Something seems to be happening, but it's possible to be totally confused about what exactly that something is- I could be a brain in a vat [dreaming or hallucinating all this]. This is basically what Solipsism is.. I can only confirm the existence of my own subjective experience, and not the contents of it, which may not be what they seem.

@WokeBloke Imagine you are dreaming, and in this dream, you are wearing a red sweatshirt and driving a blue car. Who is wearing the red sweatshirt? While you are asleep, it seems like there's a 'you' who is wearing a red sweatshirt.. but when 'you' awaken, it's realized that the 'you' you thought you were was just a dream, and there really was no-one wearing any sweatshirt at all. The 'experiencer' who 'experienced wearing a sweatshirt' was just more experience. There was never anyone wearing a red sweatshirt!

@Mh1781 let me ask you this- If it REALLY SEEMED TO YOU that you were on fire, like you could feel the burning, and see the flames, and experience your skin blistering, would it matter to you if you weren't 'really' on fire? If it REALLY SEEMS like there are others, does it really matter if that's not actually the case? Like, if you can't tell the difference.. is there any difference?

Scrotumism was first introduced by the ancient philosopher Testicles.

Yep. This is why it's frustrating to hear people ask, 'If I'm dreaming this up, why can't I dream up whatever I want?'. The answer, of course, is, 'but you are already doing that, silly, only you think you're not.' It's like asking yourself, 'why can't I think whatever I want to think?'. Well, you're already doing that, aren't you?

Consider the whirlpool.. Is there really such a thing as a whirlpool? If I asked you to show me a whirlpool, without showing me the river, could you? Can you take a whirlpool out of the river and show it to me? If whirlpools produced thoughts instead of bubbles, one thought that might bubble up is 'I am doing this.. I am making these thoughts', but the bubbles are something the whole river is doing. 'You' are something the whole Universe is doing. Yes, it's fine to say, ' the whirlpool is the source of the bubbles', but understand that the river is the source of the whirlpool, and the mountains the source of the river.. The mountains are producing the bubbles just as much as the whirlpool. All the distinctions.. mountain, river, whirlpool, bubbles.. all are source and none are source.. All are 'doing what they do', none are 'cause of what they do'..

From my perspective, the only one I have, I can't tell if you really have a perspective, or if it just really seems to me like you do. Since this is the case, it doesn't matter to me which is true and so I can stop caring about it. The same would be true for you, from your perspective, if you really have one. It doesn't matter to me if you don't, because it seems to me that you do, which is just as good.

@WokeBloke when the clouds change shape.. we say, the clouds are changing. Changing is what the clouds are doing. Are the clouds 'doing that' in the same sense you think I 'do things'? If so, then I agree, I do things. The clouds do things. Trees do things. Rocks do things.