How Is It Possible To Be Wrong If Reality Is Relative?

[r0ckyreed]

One of the things that I have been really struggling with is how to reconcile and integrate the insight that reality is relative into my daily life. 

I have fallen into the trap of relativism of thinking that everything is relative; therefore, I cannot be wrong about anything.

Relativism seems to be a key concept in actualized.org teachings, but I am starting to question relativism because I do not think it takes a full account of Truth.

Absolute Truth cannot be conflated with Absolute Relativism. These are different.

Relativism fails to take into account that some beliefs are more in alignment with how reality works than others. Relativism seems to apply that everyone is right and nobody can be wrong because it is just their opinion.

But one of my objections to relativism is that the fact that we are arguing over something is evidence of a truth beyond relativism. Why argue if everything is just perspective and opinion? Your arguments would be no more valid than mine since it would equate to you being X likes chocolate and me being Y likes vanilla. 

But there seems to be more to the picture. Objectivism does seem to be true because the fact that we are arguing over something, and the fact that some beliefs and some individuals have greater understanding than others suggests that it isn't all equally relative. That there is some hierarchy of perspectives. But the problem is what is the hierarchy, how does it work, and how do we know?

For instance, one person could believe a Lake Monster. They could be right about there being dangers in going into a lake, but they could be right for the wrong reasons. So, instead of it being a Lake Monster, in reality, it was revealed that it was a crocodile. We could also conceive of someone believing there is a Lake Monster when there is actually no threat at all and was just pure fantasy. Do you see how relativism does not apply here. This person's belief has no bearing of truth whatsoever. The whole idea that everyone's perspective has a sliver of truth is a pure fantasy. 

Someone could believe in space kangaroos or believe to see an alien. People who have massive hallucinations could see these under the influence of psychedelics or under mental psychosis. Do you see how this issue gets more complex? Because now, we are suggesting that the sober state is more true than psychotic/psychedelic state. But this we could say is a relative and arbitrary hierarchy that we are imposing onto reality and truth. But at the same time, we could say that psychotic/psychedelic states are objectively wrong because they are less reliable than sober states of consciousness. We could say from an evolutionary point of view, that non-sober states of consciousness have gotten people killed because their beliefs/actions differed from reality in a way that got them killed (i.e., believing you can fly when you can't- From Forrest Gump).

I just see that I get lost in this, and I know that I have not solved this issue because the battle between Objectivism and Relativism is very nuanced. 

Remember that objectivism means that something is true independent of what you or a society believes about it. Relativism means that the truth of something depends on an individual, society, culture.

When it comes to values, I think we could say that these are purely relative truth, or put in another way, we could say that values are objective truths about an individual at that given time. This is because our values will differ across time, so we cannot say that values are solidly objective. But we can be wrong about our own values. So in a way, our values are objective in a sense that we can be wrong about them.

What are your thoughts?

[Atb210201]

@r0ckyreed If everything is relative then relativism is absolute isn't it?

This statement contradicts itself

I mean come on "absolute relativism"? Is that even a thing? How could it be possible? It's an oxymoron

Better to say there are both relative and absolute aspects to things

Sometimes there are rights and wrongs

And sometimes there aren't or you could say it this way there is always a right and a wrong in every situation and rights and wrongs are dynamic but you can let it go Sometimes maybe even you could say it like this that the right thing to do Sometimes is letting go itself

You get to choose and distinguish

Similarly, sometimes you must judge

And Sometimes you mustn't

You get to choose and distinguish where and when to do what

Edited June 3 by Atb210201

[r0ckyreed]

1 hour ago, Atb210201 said:

@r0ckyreed If everything is relative then relativism is absolute isn't it?

This statement contradicts itself

I mean come on "absolute relativism"? Is that even a thing? How could it be possible? It's an oxymoron

Better to say there are both relative and absolute aspects to things

Sometimes there are rights and wrongs

And sometimes there aren't or you could say it this way there is always a right and a wrong in every situation and rights and wrongs are dynamic but you can let it go Sometimes maybe even you could say it like this that the right thing to do Sometimes is letting go itself

You get to choose and distinguish

Similarly, sometimes you must judge

And Sometimes you mustn't

You get to choose and distinguish where and when to do what

I agree that it contradicts, but Absolute Relativism holds that the only Absolute Truth is that everything is relative. But as we can see, this doesn’t seem to be right because people can be deluded about reality and it isn’t just an opinion.

[Leo Gura]

It's good that you are thinking more seriously about this topic, because it is very tricky and most people are wrong in their understanding of it.

You are inside a dream. Your dream has a certain coherence and flow to it which is beyond you ability to control or to change. Those aspects of your dream which you cannot change, we call objective truth or "reality". For example, you are dreaming that the Earth is round, and you cannot undream that. But all of that assumes your dream will continue as before. But that won't always be the case. Your dream could change and then all those objective truths are rug-pulled.

And then there could be truths which hold regardless of what you're dreaming. For example, the nature of Consciousness is beyond the contents of any dream. The fact that you are in a dream, is not relative or subjective.

But beware, most things which people call objective truths are not, they are opinions, beliefs, interpretations, and perspectives.

And beware, people are not all dreaming the same dream. So what is objectively true in your dream may not be in another's dream. This is one of big mistakes of science: science assumes we all dream the same dream.

But even furthermore, ultimately you are dreaming all other dreams and dreamers. So in this sense everything is absolutely relative to You/God. But you as a human are nowhere near this level of consciousness.

Edited June 3 by Leo Gura

[Keryo Koffa]

Regarding the nature of reality including objectivity and subjectivity, I find myself learning much from Seth and finding much confirmation in my psychedelic experiences. It doesn't contradict Leo either, and also feels like the kind of reality I would create if I tried to have the best of all worlds and go really into depth and create the most complete and limitless version of the universe and explain all that I know of. One might be able to claim confirmation bias, but all I read is mind expanding in its nature of potentiality and that bias can be applied to anyone and anything irregardless of circumstance, especially through the concept of unconscious beliefs.

I'm still integrating insights from Seth. The idea there is that all of reality is made of units of consciousness scaling infinitely across all dimensions, coming together to form a reality. They form gestalts as you and me, there are alternate potential and probable selves also distinguished by frequency, intent, imagined past and choices but there is no real self, just seeming ever morphing gestalts operating in tendon to create coherent desired experiences forming consciously or unconsciously through desires and beliefs, ever expanding portions of reality that become coherent on their own and become their own gestalts, with every part its own holistic portion, never at risk of disappearance but ever freely morphing into new shapes and forms expressing and changing identity. According to Seth, consciousness seeking out actuality through its beliefs and self-knowledge alternates between different dimensions of actuality, there are multiple versions of ourselves and they all morph into congruent realities creating them in the process of merging with other conscious selves congruent with the identity of such actuality.

Here's some quotes:

"No objective reality exists but that which is created by consciousness, consciousness always creates form and not the other way around, so my environment is a reality of existence and created by myself and others like me and it represents the manifestation of our development [...] You think that objects exist independently of you, not realizing they are instead the manifestations of your own psychological and psychic selves [...] you usually don't realize that your physical body is created by you at each moment as a direct result of your inner conception of what you are or that it changes in important chemical and electromagnetic ways with the ever moving pace of your own thought [...] there are no real barriers to separate the systems of which I speak, the only separation is brought about by the varying abilities of personalities to perceive and manipulate, you exist in the midst of many other systems of reality for example but you do not perceive them"

"There is no static god, when you say: 'this is god", then god is already something else, I'm using the term god for simplicity's sake, all portions of All That Is are constantly changing, unfolding. All That Is, seeking to know itself, constantly creates new versions of itself, for this seeking itself is a creative activity and the core of all creation. Entities being action always shift and change, there is nothing arbitrary about their boundaries. Some personalities can be apart of more than one entity, like fish, they can swim in other streams, within them is the knowledge of all their relationships. Any personality can become an entity on its own, this involves highly developed knowledge of the use of energy and its intensities. As atoms have mobility, so do psychological structures. Consciousness seeking to know itself therefore knows you. You, as a consciousness, seek to know yourself and become aware of yourself as a distinct individual portion of All That Is. You not only draw upon this overall energy but you do so automatically, since your existence is dependent upon it"

"The responsibility for your life and your world is indeed yours, it has not been forced upon you by some outside agency, you form your dreams and you form your own physical reality. The world is what you are, it is the physical materialization of the inner selves that have formed it."

TLDR; The idea is that there is an underlying Entity that gives rise to conscious entities within it that themselves form subjective realities through self-discovery and can tune themselves into communication with each others to give rise to a consensus space which only exists as a result of their interaction. There is an absolute reality giving rise to them, a subjective reality encompassing the entirety of their local experience and a consensus reality which is the result of overlapping subjective experiences but does not exist independently.

That framework is very complex and I believe to have heard that everything is made from consciousness including the smallest particles, but the gist is that the world is transient and only exists while conscious agents actively create in within their (shared) consciousness, only our experience exists and the world disappears when we aren't tuned to it, at the same time it is an eternal idea we can always chose to tune ourselves into because everything is a mental construction, a vibration and space but also created in the process and everything potentially possible exists eternally as an idea or memory or imagination, so what reality really is, is conscious entities imagining a specific dimension of reality into existence or dreaming it up using their internal senses, to find/create/discover that part of themselves.

It's a lot to take in, I know, there are dozens of hours of audiobooks on YouTube and I'm listening to all of them. It really accounts for all kinds of conscious phenomena and gives a comprehensive understanding of all of reality that unites every contradiction one could possibly conjure up, you really have to hear it for yourself.

 

 

[Atb210201]

@r0ckyreed That's it you're right on this

Also try this thought too

If everything is relative then this exact absolute statement that "everything is relative" is also relative and not absolute isn't it?

Huh

That's some food for thought

Edited June 4 by Atb210201

[Alexop]

@r0ckyreed Everything is relative but when we argue, we argue what is the relative truth relative to X, Y, Z. When we agree that Trump is an idiot, we say Trump is an idiot relative to a good moral human conduit, politics done for the good of the citizens, awareness of the ego's defense mechanisms etc. 

[enchanted]

12 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

But one of my objections to relativism is that the fact that we are arguing over something is evidence of a truth beyond relativism. Why argue if everything is just perspective and opinion? Your arguments would be no more valid than mine since it would equate to you being X likes chocolate and me being Y likes vanilla. 

The truth beyond relativism is that all preferences that we are fighting over are like flavors of icecream. 

12 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

So, instead of it being a Lake Monster, in reality, it was revealed that it was a crocodile. 

In reality a crocodile is alot like a lake monster. Only in our minds do we call a crocodile not a lake monster!

[Dan502]

To the mind, everything appears relative.

[Breakingthewall]

Reality is not relative, it is absolute, and it traces a narrow path that you must follow. If you deviate, it will hit you with the whip of suffering. The problem is that you are deviated as standard.

Edited June 3 by Breakingthewall

[enchanted]

21 minutes ago, Breakingthewall said:

Reality is not relative, it is absolute, and it traces a narrow path that you must follow. If you deviate, it will hit you with the whip of suffering. The problem is that you are deviated as standard.

Awesome

[Ishanga]

I agree with Breakingthewall, Reality as it is is not Relative, but Your Perception of Reality is Relative and Subjective, this is where Awareness comes in, think of Awareness as another form of Intelligence that we as Humans have access to.

Most Human today, due to our Educational system and other factors, are on the level of Intellectual Intelligence, that is why you keep on asking questions when getting answers, the Intellect is about calculating and separating/dividing, but we are here on this Spirituality Forum, talking about Spirt and Oneness, Connection, Absolute, and trying to figure this out via the Intellect which is a dividing tool, its like using a knife to knit, it won't work, so Use Awareness, just be Aware, increase the intensity of your Awareness via the many methods available to You today, when this is done then You are Conscious and have great Clarity of what is Reality and how to be One with it and navigate it via our human tools of Body and Mind...

[r0ckyreed]

18 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

It's good that you are thinking more seriously about this topic, because it is very tricky and most people are wrong in their understanding of it.

You are inside a dream. Your dream has a certain coherence and flow to it which is beyond you ability to control or to change. Those aspects of your dream which you cannot change, we call objective truth or "reality". For example, you are dreaming that the Earth is round, and you cannot undream that. But all of that assumes your dream will continue as before. But that won't always be the case. Your dream could change and then all those objective truths are rug-pulled.

And then there could be truths which hold regardless of what you're dreaming. For example, the nature of Consciousness is beyond the contents of any dream. The fact that you are in a dream, is not relative or subjective.

But beware, most things which people call objective truths are not, they are opinions, beliefs, interpretations, and perspectives.

And beware, people are not all dreaming the same dream. So what is objectively true in your dream may not be in another's dream. This is one of big mistakes of science: science assumes we all dream the same dream.

But even furthermore, ultimately you are dreaming all other dreams and dreamers. So in this sense everything is absolutely relative to You/God. But you as a human are nowhere near this level of consciousness.

@Leo GuraYou seem to have a different definition of objectivity than the traditional philosophical one. The traditional definition of objectivity is typically defined as something being true if nobody believed it or even if no conscious beings existed.

The issue I see is that something could be “objective” within the dream but at the same time still be dependent on the existence of the nature of the dream/dreamer itself.

For example, the laws of physics would be contingent on the dreamer having that specific dream even though that the dream does not have control over the laws of physics. So it is a kind of contradiction it seems.

Your point about different dreamers having different dreams seems to challenge the idea of a shared, objective reality. The fact that we are able to do science and communicate seems to imply that there is a shared dream/reality. If it isn’t true across all dreams, then wouldn’t that be relative and not objective? Objective would be true across all dreams?

I would also say that what most people call relative truths could also be objective truths as well. Thinking that happiness and health is purely subjective. But there is a science behind happiness and health and there are right and wrong strategies to attain happiness and good health. Also personal values is another one like I said. You could say that you value truth, but in reality, your behaviors could contradict that - cognitive dissonance.

But at the same time, I ask myself why reality is the way that it is at all. Why is reality set up in this way to where these particular things are objective? Could they not be objective? But at the same time, what would limit the Universe to not be able to change some of these objective truths like the earth being round? If they could be changed then they wouldn’t be objective per se, but if they couldn’t be changed, then the Universe may not be infinite?

Maybe it is possible to have objective truths that do change over time such as right now it is true regardless of what you believe that there are no aliens on Earth. But this could change. People can be deluded about aliens having visited earth. People could think that other minds do exist outside their own but they can be wrong about that. People could also go the other extreme and become solipsists. But more fundamental truths such as Consciousness itself cannot be changed because they are what it is and cannot be another way.

Edited June 3 by r0ckyreed

[Donald]

Reality is the ultimate Spiderman meme  

[Leo Gura]

4 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

Your point about different dreamers having different dreams seems to challenge the idea of a shared, objective reality. The fact that we are able to do science and communicate seems to imply that there is a shared dream/reality.

"Shared objective reality" is a sort of construction.

However, for human purposes there is much in common between our dreams so that's what makes "objective facts" possible.

How this situation looks really depends on your level of consciousness. If you have human levels of consciousness then things appear objective when they would be relative at higher levels. Objectivity depends on how deep you are dreaming, so some extent.

Edited June 4 by Leo Gura

[Someone here]

@Leo Gura a quick question please:

When you say you are dreaming all dreams and all dreamers from the most absolute sense as god ..then you say you cannot undream the floor underneath you and such .because your ego isn't in control of the dream unlike the god you so to speak...why is that ? You answered this question in your interview with Curt J. That the dream must be convincing and not loosey-goosey ..but when we dream at night some dreams are just a bunch of nonsensical hodgebodge of unorganised unrelated events and some dreams are 100% coherent and logical. I once dreamt an entire life. I was born ..I went to school ..I got married and raised a family and then I died and awakend in my bed . So why the waking state is always consistent unlike the dreams at night ..? If there is no difference whatsoever between the waking dream and the sleeping dream then shouldn't that not be the case ?

 

[Leo Gura]

10 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@Leo Gura a quick question please:

When you say you are dreaming all dreams and all dreamers from the most absolute sense as god ..then you say you cannot undream the floor underneath you and such .because your ego isn't in control of the dream unlike the god you so to speak...why is that ?

What's being dreamt is not up to you, it's up to God. And it's not really even up to God because God is just an absolute ocean of dreams. God doesn't manipulate the dreams, God is surrendered to whatever dreams must be dreamt. That's what Absolute Truth means. There is a certain absolute flow to Consciousness. It's like a mighty river that no one can stop, not even God.

Quote

You answered this question in your interview with Curt J. That the dream must be convincing and not loosey-goosey ..but when we dream at night some dreams are just a bunch of nonsensical hodgebodge of unorganised unrelated events and some dreams are 100% coherent and logical. I once dreamt an entire life. I was born ..I went to school ..I got married and raised a family and then I died and awakend in my bed . So why the waking state is always consistent unlike the dreams at night ..? If there is no difference whatsoever between the waking dream and the sleeping dream then shouldn't that not be the case ?

They are just different styles of dream. Some dreams are very loose and others are very rigged. Notice, humans need sleep to rest because they get exhausted from too much rigged dreaming. Consciousness has to balance out the rigged dreams with loose ones or it goes mad. That's because the nature of Consciousness is to dream, and dream big.

Edited June 4 by Leo Gura

[Someone here]

12 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

What's being dreamt is no up to you, it's up to God. And it's not really even up to God because God is just an Absolute Ocean Of Dreams. God doesn't manipulate the dreams, God is surrendered to whatever dreams must be dreamt. That's what Absolute Truth means. There is a certain absolute flow to Consciousness. It's like a mighty river that no one can stop, not even God.

So I as a human being are completely powerless pertaining how this dream I'm dreaming in this current life unfolds?  ...so let me use analogy of a an actor in a movie and the director.  What the actor does is determined by the scenario of the author and the director of the movie ..but here you are saying God doesn't have a sense of self .it's complete selfless like an infinite amount of multiverses that must be dreamt ..so there is no conscious agent that is controlling the dream (existence)? Even God is not an agent ?

18 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

They are just different styles of dream. Some dreams are very loose and others are very rigged. Notice, humans need sleep to rest because they get exhausted from too much rigged dreaming. Consciousness has to balance out the rigged dreams with loose ones or it goes mad. That's because the nature of Consciousness is to dream, and dream big.

Edited 8 minutes ago by Leo Gura

Brilliant. Thanks 

[r0ckyreed]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

"Shared objective reality" is a sort of construction.

However, for human purposes there is much in common between our dreams so that's what makes "objective facts" possible.

How this situation looks really depends on your level of consciousness. If you have human levels of consciousness then things appear objective when they would be relative at higher levels. Objectivity depends on how deep you are dreaming, so some extent.

@Leo GuraYes but what about foolishness. At lower levels of consciousness, a fool is deluded and thinks they are right and that wisdom is just relative. But at higher levels of consciousness, we see that wisdom has more objective features even as it relates to relative domains. There is a way that reality is structured and relative to how reality is structured right now, there are objective truths relative to this structure and self-imposed rule-sets.

A person could believe in the Christian God and that Jesus is King. And that the Bible is true. But these people are wrong in all possible worlds because the Bible is content within consciousness. There is no pulling this out from the rug and changing the objective truth. It is easier to be wrong than it is to be right because the only thing I know I am right about is that consciousness exists. People may think that death isn’t real or that there is an afterlife. These people would be right or wrong relative to the actual structure of reality and this would be independent of their beliefs but still dependent on the Universe/Consciousness. Delusion is relative/dependent to the structure of reality. This does not mean that delusion is an illusion. It just means that given that gravity exists on earth, it would be a delusion to think you can fly with no other modifications.

Wisdom also seems to be relative and objective at the same time. If there is no objectivity, then wisdom does not really exist because wisdom suggests that one’s attitudes and way of life are in alignment with truth, how reality works. But if it is all relative, then a Trump supporter is as wise as a Sage. However, wisdom is also relative in the sense that when we evaluate a certain belief or individual as wise, we are imposing our own subjective criteria into that. What makes a belief or somebody wise? This question seems to have objective and subjective elements to it and there could be an infinitude of possible answers.

Edited June 4 by r0ckyreed

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

So I as a human being are completely powerless pertaining how this dream I'm dreaming in this current life unfolds? 

No. You have some power over how you use your mind and that leads to different actions which influence the universe in a small way.

Edited June 4 by Leo Gura