Why solipsism is not Absolute

[Razard86]

16 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

The Absolute is existence beyond all concepts; pure undivided existence. It cannot be divided for it is One. Once you divide it, you're in the relative; relationships between parts. And each part is necessarily a concept, something you thought up in your mind.

Solipsism claims "only my own experience exists; nobody else is conscious". It posits the concept of "my experience" as contrasted to "other people's experience". It therefore deals with the relative. It divides existence into parts (me vs. not me, conscious vs. not conscious), concepts, with relationships between them: me is the opposite of not me, conscious is the opposite of not conscious, only me is conscious and not other people.

Also, behind the concepts of me vs. not me (as an example), lie a ton of assumptions and yet more concepts. How do you identify who is me and who is other people? Through bodies? What is a body? Where does the body begin and where does it end? Is there an absolute boundary, or is it relative to how you choose to draw it? 

How are you seeing other people's bodies? Is seeing absolute? What happens if you close your eyes? Do you still see? No? What happens if there is a brick wall between your eyes and the body you are trying to see? Do you see still the body? No? So seemingly, seeing exists in relationship to other things, like eyes and things near and around the eyes. So seeing itself is also relative.

Then how can you base "the Absolute" on something relative like seeing, bodies, "conscious" and "other people"; concepts that are defined in relationship to something else (conscious vs. not conscious, me vs. not me, seeing vs. not seeing, body vs. not body, my body vs. not my body, etc.)? The answer is: you can't.

Absolute Solipsism makes no claim to my experience. Absolute Solipsism says....there is no ME, there is no my experience. What it says because there is no me, there is no other. Since there is no me or other, there is no experiencer, all there is....is experience. This experience...is Sentient. This Sentient/Alive experience is Absolute onto itself. It is both the Self and Selfless.

It is a Self because it is all Form. It is Selfless, because it is nothing. Because it is selfless, it has the ability to Animate itself, because it is Self, it has the ability to be a form. Because it is Selfless first, it is an illusion, pure imagination, pure magic, because it is the Self, it is Real, personal. Many of you know what an individual self is, and have lived it as an Absolute always.

Absolute Solipsism is more profound. It asks you to die to personhood, while also embracing it at the same time. It is a paradox, and it cannot be experienced through egoic control. It can only be experienced through an AUTHENTIC INQUIRY through the GRACE OF GOD. Only God will allow an ego to drop the illusion and realize the TRUTH. But the verification method is AUTHENTICITY ITSELF. TRUTH and LOVE is not forced, it can only be accepted.

 

[UnbornTao]

@Razard86 

You try to defend your position so firmly, it makes me think that you might be speaking from intellect rather than personal, experiential insight.

Why the strong, even defensive, assertiveness?

If at this moment the truth is unknown, better to acknowledge that. That helps us investigate with fresh eyes, or in a new light. 

Edited yesterday at 10:26 AM by UnbornTao

[Carl-Richard]

I think solipsism could largely be a product of modern society and specifically large-scale cities and urban environments.

Take the experience of walking through a city. Due to individualization, people already don't care about you. And in the city, large masses of people walk anonymously without interacting or talking to you or even seeing you, and seemingly on autopilot, like drones or zombies being directed by some outside force like the 9-to-5 job.

It creates a feeling of disconnection from other people and as if other people are not real people, as if they are merely props, with no personal drive or agency, no personal warmth; hollow appearances of humans.

On the other hand, if you had lived in say a pre-modern tribal society, you would've known everybody personally, everybody would've greeted you and looked you in the eyes, shook your hand and patted you on the back, shared their thoughts, feelings and experiences with you. You would've felt deeply connected to them and felt them to be similar beings to yourself.

As for urban environments, especially in the US or other places where the underlying terrain is very flat, you rarely see more than a few hundred meters infront of you. The sense of your everyday world is very local and boxed in, claustrophobic even. 

Meanwhile, if you walk on top of a mountain range and look across the vast landscape, or look up at the clear nightsky unsullied by the light pollution of the city, and if you really get out of your constantly distracted and wandering mind (also fed by city life), you will get the sensation that you are essentially nothing in this grand cosmos.

You will get the sensation that your experience of life is just a tiny speck out of a much larger reality way beyond your local experience of everyday life and your personal theatre. To then think that your puny little mind is all that exists becomes exceedingly unthinkable.

Edited Friday at 10:22 PM by Carl-Richard

[ChrisZoZo]

On 14/11/2024 at 3:16 PM, Spiritual Warfare said:

There are no solid reasons to believe in solipsism

Realising it absolutely is 

[Breakingthewall]

You are not alone because what you really are is the total breadth that is. the idea of loneliness, another, one, two, occurs within this. To realize your total nature you must open yourself completely. Opening yourself means putting aside what closes you, and what closes you is your fear and your preference. when it happens it's just total, full and alive. 

You might think: how can he be alive? This is a positive attribute that occurs in the unlimited, but no, your living essence permeates all reality because it has no opposite, it is the inextinguishable source that springs from the bottomless abyss, the absolute being. 

Edited Friday at 07:09 PM by Breakingthewall

[Nilsi]

6 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

I think solipsism could largely be a product of modern society and specifically large-scale cities and urban environments.

Take the experience of walking through a city. Due to individualization, people already don't care about you. And in the city, large masses of people walk anonymously without interacting our talking to you or even seeing you, and seemingly on autopilot, like drones or zombies, being directed by some outside force like the 9-to-5 job life. It creates a feeling of disconnection from other people and as if other people are not real people, as if they are merely props, with no personal drive or agency, no warmth; hollow appearances of humans. On the other hand, if you had lived in say a pre-modern tribal society, you would know everybody personally, everybody would greet you and look you in the eyes, shake your hand and pat you on your back, share their thoughts, feelings and experiences with you. You would feel deeply connected to them and feel them as similar beings to yourself.

As for urban environments, especially in the US or other places where the underlying terrain is very flat, you rarely see more than a few hundred meters infront of you. Your sense of your day-to-day world is very local and boxed in, claustrophobic even. Meanwhile, if you walk on top of a mountain range and look out across the vast landscape, or look up at the clear nightsky unsullied by the light pollution of the city, and if you really get out of your constantly distracted and wandering mind (also fed by city life), you will get the sensation that you are essentially nothing in this vast cosmos. Your experience of life is just a tiny speck out of a much larger reality way beyond your local experience of everyday life and your personal theatre.

I think you’re spot-on that approaching metaphysics through phenomenology is where the conversation should be. But I’d push back on whether your nostalgia for “authenticity” is anything more than a symptom of the very "urban life" you’ve identified so incisively.

Your lived experience isn’t outside the constructs you critique - it is Jameson’s Logic of Late Capitalism, Fisher’s Business Ontology, Baudrillard’s Hyperreality. To romanticize ideas like “the vast cosmos” or an imagined “pre-modern tribal society” as somehow untouched by postmodernity is to overlook how deeply those ideals are products of the same age you’re critiquing.

This, I think, is a challenge that metaphysics itself needs to grapple with - and a blind spot that the so-called “Theorists of Everything” seem unwilling or unable to take seriously.

Edited Friday at 07:14 PM by Nilsi

[Breakingthewall]

On 14/11/2024 at 4:46 PM, Water by the River said:

Koan: Who is thinking for about Solipsism again? What is the dreamer and the dream again?

the idea of solipsism is only an apparent movement of the total. The dreamer and the dream are the same, an apparent movement in infinity, where real movement is impossible since there is no place to go, only being.

[Razard86]

9 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

@Razard86 

You are so sure and convinced of yourself, and you try to defend your position so firmly, it makes me think that what you have going on in your case is something other than personal insight into the matter--perhaps it is something intellectually concluded, based on or originating from external input. There is such a thing as excessive or overly strong assertiveness, and one might ask themselves what it is based on and what purpose it serves. Maybe the honest thing to acknowledge at this moment is that the truth is actually unknown, if it is (which it very likely is). That helps us consider things with fresh eyes, or in a new light. 

There is no convince of myself. I have literally become ONE with God. I've done it sober. Anyone can do it with a Pure Authentic Desire to make the Connection. Nothing special about me, only thing special is my desire to commune with God. Wasting time debating on here on whether what I say or anyone says is a waste of time and is just an egoic trap for intellectual stimulation.

[Spiritual Warfare]

1 hour ago, ChrisZoZo said:

Realising it absolutely is 

What makes you so sure it’s true?

 

[James123]

28 minutes ago, Razard86 said:

There is no convince of myself. I have literally become ONE with God. I've done it sober. Anyone can do it with a Pure Authentic Desire to make the Connection. Nothing special about me, only thing special is my desire to commune with God. Wasting time debating on here on whether what I say or anyone says is a waste of time and is just an egoic trap for intellectual stimulation.

İ don't want to interrupt the conversation, however have a question.

Where are you in the so called body, where is god to become one with and where is the location that you met with god?

[Carl-Richard]

 

15 hours ago, Razard86 said:

.....Do you know how many questions I have answered? I have answered so many questions its mind numbing. The truth is...it is YOU who have not answered your own question.

Ok, Donald Trump.

 

15 hours ago, Razard86 said:

I got a question for you....HAVE you gone INFINITE? Have you penetrated into the Absolute? If the answer is no, then you are wasting your time on speculation. 

Yes.

Now answer the question. I will re-phrase it and make it more specific:

Is it possible that the colors, sounds and smells you currently are perceiving (perceptions), are not the only perceptions that could be perceived, and that some perceptions could be currently hidden to you?

Edited Friday at 10:26 PM by Carl-Richard

[Carl-Richard]

3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

I think you’re spot-on that approaching metaphysics through phenomenology is where the conversation should be. But I’d push back on whether your nostalgia for “authenticity” is anything more than a symptom of the very "urban life" you’ve identified so incisively.

It was really just a way to explain the ubiquity of solipsism, but sure, I like community and nature.

 

3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

Your lived experience isn’t outside the constructs you critique - it is Jameson’s Logic of Late Capitalism, Fisher’s Business Ontology, Baudrillard’s Hyperreality. To romanticize ideas like “the vast cosmos” or an imagined “pre-modern tribal society” as somehow untouched by postmodernity is to overlook how deeply those ideals are products of the same age you’re critiquing.

What if I say "yes and I'll take both"?

 

3 hours ago, Nilsi said:

This, I think, is a challenge that metaphysics itself needs to grapple with - and a blind spot that the so-called “Theorists of Everything” seem unwilling or unable to take seriously.

It's an interesting phenomenon, and I think I've commented on it before in my "relativity of meta-lenses" thread from back in the day. It was back when I started to undermine the perceived infallibility of Spiral Dynamics (Sacred-cow Dynamics; excuse me for including that forced joke):

 

Edited Friday at 10:50 PM by Carl-Richard

[Ishanga]

2 hours ago, James123 said:

İ don't want to interrupt the conversation, however have a question.

Where are you in the so called body, where is god to become one with and where is the location that you met with god?

This is relatively easy to answer, but before I do that, realize we are using language and logic to discuss topics that are not logical or conceptual or make much sense, as soon as I describe it then it become that which it is not, so its a paradox in a way when using language and logic as we are doing here to talking about anti logical aspects of reality..

Where am I? I am Absolute, Absolute is everything,but I am just a bubble of Absolute in Embodied Individualized form, like an Ocean Drop, it came from the Ocean but now it is just a drop of it, but its a Hologram of the Ocean, its the same thing, but only a drop of it, in India they call this (what I/You/all of Us) Atman, or Soul, but not the same meaning as what most ppl think of the word Soul, there are no "Individual Souls", there is just One Big Soul, we just have a drop of it, Embodied within Us, its non physical of course, You can't find it in Your Body..  There are 5 sheaths covering this "Soul" that makes up basically what We all are, Human Beings, Food Sheath, Mental Sheath, Energy Sheath, Astral Sheath, Bliss Sheath, Karma is the Glue that binds it all together.  We are none of this, we are the Soul, which is Absolute but its Individualized.. I think this happens so Absolute can Experience itself in Trillions of ways, its an Expression of the Potential and Possibility that is the essence of what Absolute Is!

[UnbornTao]

17 hours ago, Razard86 said:

There is no convince of myself. I have literally become ONE with God. I've done it sober. Anyone can do it with a Pure Authentic Desire to make the Connection. Nothing special about me, only thing special is my desire to commune with God. Wasting time debating on here on whether what I say or anyone says is a waste of time and is just an egoic trap for intellectual stimulation.

Sounds good. Make sure that that is a true statement for you.

Edited yesterday at 12:27 PM by UnbornTao

[Razard86]

2 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

 

Ok, Donald Trump.

 

Yes.

Now answer the question. I will re-phrase it and make it more specific:

Is it possible that the colors, sounds and smells you currently are perceiving (perceptions), are not the only perceptions that could be perceived, and that some perceptions could be currently hidden to you?

One my name is NOT Donald Trump.  So that snarkiness reeks of inherent bias. I literally have an old thread that answered all the questions regarding Absolute Solipsism. Two you have asked this question and I have answered it and Leo has answered it. The answer is simple....Consciousness, Awareness, is TOTAL. Whatever perceptions you are perceiving are the only perceptions available in the current state. You have to change your state to experience something else.

Also to comment on one of your answers you claimed to have gone Infinite. If you have you will have noticed....only you were there. The same way only you dream at night is the same way your entire experience always is. All experience is singular, there are no plural experiences. 

Science is catching up to this understanding....https://www.essentiafoundation.org/all-matter-is-a-cognitive-hallucination-even-the-brain-itself/reading/#:~:text=Neuroscience has conceded that the,is modulated by external factors.

Edited yesterday at 01:06 AM by Razard86

[Breakingthewall]

1 minute ago, Razard86 said:

Also to comment on one of your answers you claimed to have gone Infinite. If you have you will have noticed....only you were there.

when you become infinite, you are not there, only existence is, and it's everything. "Only you are" is a limit. "Only" is like constriction, absence of constriction is breadth, and it's not "only" or "alone", it's another frequency , it's open. 

[James123]

2 hours ago, Ishanga said:

Where am I? I am Absolute, Absolute is everything,but I am just a bubble of Absolute in Embodied Individualized form, like an Ocean Drop, it came from the Ocean but now it is just a drop of it, but its a Hologram of the Ocean, its the same thing, but only a drop of it, in India they call this (what I/You/all of Us) Atman, or Soul, but not the same meaning as what most ppl think of the word Soul, there are no "Individual Souls", there is just One Big Soul, we just have a drop of it, Embodied within Us, its non physical of course, You can't find it in Your Body..  There are 5 sheaths covering this "Soul" that makes up basically what We all are, Human Beings, Food Sheath, Mental Sheath, Energy Sheath, Astral Sheath, Bliss Sheath, Karma is the Glue that binds it all together.  We are none of this, we are the Soul, which is Absolute but its Individualized.. I think this happens so Absolute can Experience itself in Trillions of ways, its an Expression of the Potential and Possibility that is the essence of what Absolute Is!

How do you not know that this isn't a illusion or thoughts?

[Carl-Richard]

1 hour ago, Razard86 said:

The answer is simple....Consciousness, Awareness, is TOTAL.

I will reveal my little trick: I asked a relative question, and you gave an absolute answer. Here is another relative question: if you close your eyes, do you stop seeing the flower vase in front of you or not? What answer will you give here? Will it be absolute or relative? I would bet it will be relative.

So why were you unable to answer my original relative question with a relative answer? I think it's because it's a tricky one and it goes right at the heart of the issue of the thread: people conflate the relative with the absolute when it comes to solipsism. They think concepts, ideas and assumptions that point toward solipsism are absolute when they are in fact relative.

 

1 hour ago, Razard86 said:

Whatever perceptions you are perceiving are the only perceptions available in the current state.

But wait, in the very next sentence, you actually gave a relative answer! Because what is "current"? Is current absolute or relative? Can "current" exist by itself without "not current"? The answer is: no. It's relative. 

So let's recap: in the first sentence, you gave an absolute answer, but in the very next sentence, you gave a relative answer — without warning, without clarification, as if you were still talking about the absolute. It's almost as if you conflated the relative with the absolute. Is that what happened or are we missing something? Will you tell us or will you not answer the question?

 

So in summary, when you pull in concepts like sense perceptions (colors, sounds, smells, etc.) or time ("current" vs. some other time) while purporting to speak about the absolute, you are conflating the relative with the absolute.

Edited yesterday at 02:28 AM by Carl-Richard

[Razard86]

1 hour ago, UnbornTao said:

Sounds good. Make sure it is sincere.

I tire of the many accusations if there is any sign of insincerity point it out. Where have I been insincere. And also...what does one gain for insincerity on here? A small ego boost on an internet forum? How desperate for attention would I have to be to sit on here and craft insincere narratives. I really think many on here suffer bouts of paranoia.

[Nilsi]

11 hours ago, Carl-Richard said:

What if I say "yes and I'll take both"?

Ugh, what does that even mean? Can’t you put some meat on the bones?

Framing this discussion through the Hobbes vs. Rousseau debate should help cut through some noise. Sure, I agree with David Graeber: the idea of history as a grand arc - whether from innocence to vice (Rousseau) or chaos to order (Hobbes) - is laughably reductive. Tribal societies expose this; they’re far more complex and diverse than such cartoonish narratives allow.

But here’s the deeper issue: the real question isn’t which grand narrative you prefer; it’s whether you can affirm reality as it is or if you need to concoct an idealized version of it just to function. The problem with the latter is obvious enough: even if your utopia were realized, your own psychology would crave it's undoing. This is Dostoevsky’s Underground Man in a nutshell - desire is always structured around a lack, and the real is never what we truly want.

And here’s the brutal paradox: we chase the real to escape it, and when we affirm it, we’re crushed by its weight. This is the tragedy of human existence - and Nietzsche’s tragedy too. His final act saw him break free from his self-staged neo-Grecian psychodrama, proclaiming himself Dionysos. But this wasn’t triumph; it was surrender. The Apollonian dream shattered, and the Dionysian real consumed him entirely, plunging him into a madness that endured until his death.

I’ll assume the connection to the solipsism debate is clear enough that it doesn’t need spelling out.

Edited yesterday at 10:33 AM by Nilsi