Why does physical reality and other people feel so real?

[Snt_lk]

Why does physical reality feel so real if it’s not. Why is there a reaffirming thought that it is? Why do we wake up each morning placed in the same reality from the day prior? Same with the nature of others. When I see people out in public, they are always going about their day with no regard to what I’m thinking or experiencing. To me, it looks like they have meaningful lives that they experiencing and living - am I wrong to think that?

Edited 14 hours ago by Snt_lk

[Leo Gura]

Why do dreams feel real until you wake up?

MIND loves to imagine realities. That's what MIND do.

Dreams ARE real. It's just that you can wake up from them.

Edited 14 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Yimpa]

1 minute ago, Leo Gura said:

MIND loves to imagine realities. That's what MIND do.

 

[Vibes]

@Yimpa You DO, Mind DO

[Snt_lk]

@Leo Gura  why is this reality so persistent?

 

when I dream at night, it’s very different every time, but when I wake, I’m back to the same physical reality.

 

[Atb210201]

9 minutes ago, Yimpa said:

 

OMG.

This is hilarious😂

[Yimpa]

11 minutes ago, Atb210201 said:

OMG.

This is hilarious😂

My Chinese ancestors takes it berry seriously. 

[Leo Gura]

16 minutes ago, Snt_lk said:

why is this reality so persistent?

Imagine that a MIND wanted to create a universe. How would it do it?

It would dream very consistently.

So here you are.

Consistency is the key to making a world.

Edited 14 hours ago by Leo Gura

[Snt_lk]

@Leo Gura 

When you say MIND, what do you mean?

I’m not sure why a MIND needs consistency to create a universe. To trick the ego perhaps?

[Leo Gura]

17 minutes ago, Snt_lk said:

@Leo Gura 

When you say MIND, what do you mean?

I’m not sure why a MIND needs consistency to create a universe. To trick the ego perhaps?

Stop assuming that anything at all exists.

Nothing can exist unless MIND imagines it. Not even time or space.

MIND your entire field of experience. The only thing there ever is.

[Hojo]

@Snt_lk You cant know if its consistent. You black out into a void every night and wake up remembering nothing. The mind will ask questions to itself when it dreams or in our case wake up in the morning to keep the consistency. If you dont ask the questions you have no idea if its consistent.

Try keeping your mind void for an hour after waking up. You will see your mind is asking itself questions to understand where it is. Don't answer and see what happens.

Wake up sit in chair dont go back to sleep just sit there and watch. The way you wake up is an algorithm. From the simulation.

Edited 13 hours ago by Hojo

[Snt_lk]

@Leo Gura I see now, thank you.

[Daniel Balan]

Ok. I understand that everything is a hallucination! But why you say that I( the individual writing this message) am the only thing that exists? And if I would die now y'all would disappear together with me. That's what I understood from your solipsism video @Leo Gura. And I dismiss some of those insights. 

From my personal experience I am like a surveillance camera for God. And every other creature be it human or animal or bird is too a surveillance camera for the mind of god. I deny that I am the only thing that exists. After all god needs all those surveillance cameras in case of emergency if one of it dies there are others so that god can continue to experience this dream he created. I came to the realisation that god created so many creatures so that he can experience as many facets of this dream as possible. And that there is nothing special about me. I'm just another leaf in god's tree. 

[Lila9]

Because reality is real. unlike dreams.

There are real-life consequences in reality, unlike in night dreams.

There are things you can do in dreams with 0% real-life consequences, but you can’t do them when you are awake without consequences.

If you cut your hand in a dream, there is no real harm to your hand.

But if you do that when you are awake, you may suffer from real consequences that affect you.

Saying that there is no difference between a night dream and a waking state is not accurate. 

Just because reality is complex and susceptible to our subjective interpretation doesn’t mean that it is illusory.

The illusion in reality is our subjective, biased, and corrupted view of it, our perception of it, but not reality itself, which we can’t even accurately or fully grasp. 

Our perception of reality is also limited by our biology, making it very difficult and even impossible to fully understand reality, as our senses may not perceive it fully accurately in the first place. Our senses perceive reality good enough to meet our survival needs, but not to fully understand it. 

We can only theorize and invent concepts to understand reality, but those concepts are illusory.

Reality itself is just the playground in which all illusions happen.

Reality is what there is. 

Illusions can’t exist without reality, there must be something real to create illusions and sustain them.

It’s the same as light not being able to exist without darkness. If everything is light, then there is no light.

 

[Letho]

8 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Stop assuming that anything at all exists.

Nothing can exist unless MIND imagines it. Not even time or space.

MIND your entire field of experience. The only thing there ever is.

'MIND your entire field of experience’… right. But what does that actually mean beyond wordplay? Saying ‘nothing can exist unless MIND imagines it’ is just rewording mysticism with a metaphysical shrug. The real question isn’t whether MIND imagines, rather how imagination structures experience in a way that persists. What MUST be asked is, if MIND is the foundation of reality, then what is it doing? What process prevents experience from dissolving into incoherence? Because without some organizing principle, MIND would be an ocean of fleeting chaos, not the structured, persistent reality we navigate; ACTION is the fundamental quantity and quality here. 'MIND' is a noun, reality.. an active process. Without describing the action, you’re just slapping a label on the unknown and pretending it’s understood. If someone asked how a fire burns, you wouldn’t just say ‘FIRE’ and consider the question resolved. You’d describe combustion.

So what’s the equivalent here? What’s MIND’s equivalent of combustion that turns raw imagination into stable reality? Take ‘compression algorithm’, at least that’s a verb, a process. It explains one side of reality, that is, how information is stripped of redundancy, reducing raw sensory chaos into structured perception, whether in a simple sentence or a mathematical equation. But even that’s incomplete because it only describes processing not the dimensional scaffolding of experience itself, one of the most neglected aspects of reality’s architecture.

Though at least ‘compression algorithm’ gives us a function to analyze. ‘MIND’ just sits there, undefined, while people project their own meanings onto it.

That’s where things get tricky, when a concept remains vague, people instinctively fill in the gaps, often misinterpreting it in ways that generate more confusion than clarity. This isn’t necessarily about the teaching itself, but about how ideas are absorbed, distorted, and repackaged, something that happens frequently on this forum. The result isn’t deeper understanding but a kind of performative certainty, where people pretend to know while the core explanations remain incomplete; in action.

So the real question isn’t just about imagination, but what enforces structure within its infinite field? Until that’s answered, ‘MIND’ is just a poetic stand-in for ‘we don’t know.’ And if we’re serious about going beyond intellectual aesthetics, then defining these underlying mechanisms should be the next step.

And this ties back to the broader discussion, if reality and dreams feel indistinguishable, then the real question isn’t whether this is a dream, it’s what stabilizes it into coherence while other ‘dreams’ collapse. Until that mechanism is defined, ‘MIND’ remains an aesthetic description rather than a functional explanation.

Edited 5 hours ago by Letho

[Leo Gura]

1 hour ago, Daniel Balan said:

I came to the realisation that god created so many creatures so that he can experience as many facets of this dream as possible. And that there is nothing special about me. I'm just another leaf in god's tree. 

How do you know that you aren't dreaming all those other creatures?

How do you know you're not absolutely special and unique? One of a kind.

Edited 4 hours ago by Leo Gura

[PurpleTree]

43 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

How do you know that you aren't dreaming all those other creatures?

How do you know you're not absolutely special and unique? One of a kind.

How do you know that you even exist?

[Breakingthewall]

2 hours ago, Letho said:

The real question isn’t whether MIND imagines, rather how imagination structures experience in a way that persists. What MUST be asked is, if MIND is the foundation of reality, then what is it doing?

It's impossible for a mind to imagine reality because that would imply that the mind already contains that reality and is recreating it for some reason, because it likes it, or whatever. All of these are finite frameworks. The phrase "infinite mind" is impossible; a mind is finite. Infinity is indefinable; it's not a mind that wants things; it's simply infinite.

[Letho]

11 hours ago, Snt_lk said:

Why does physical reality feel so real if it’s not. Why is there a reaffirming thought that it is? Why do we wake up each morning placed in the same reality from the day prior? Same with the nature of others. When I see people out in public, they are always going about their day with no regard to what I’m thinking or experiencing. To me, it looks like they have meaningful lives that they experiencing and living - am I wrong to think that?

@Snt_lk Reality isn’t 'real'? Sure and water isn’t wet, until you fall in. Funny how the people most eager to claim ‘reality isn’t real’ still don’t walk into traffic to test their theory.

The thing is, ‘real’ isn’t some absolute, it’s a useful word of comparison. It only exists because we’ve all experienced something that feels real in contrast. So trying to ‘debunk’ reality using words that only exist because reality is persistent is like trying to prove silence by screaming.

And if we’re being honest, reality doesn’t just feel real because of some abstract ‘mind’, it feels real because your nervous system is processing a constant flood of energy, sensation, emotion. You’re not just observing life, you’re feeling it pulse through you, exchanged, mirrored, absorbed. That’s why grief sits heavy in your chest. That’s why music can make your heart race. That’s why the right touch, in the right moment, can make you lose track of time. Ever notice how reality doesn’t just happen to you, it grabs you, seduces you, throws you around a little? Why does a good meal feel euphoric? Why does heartbreak physically hurt? Why can a single touch from the right person send electricity through your entire nervous system?

So yeah, your mind is dreaming all of this, that much is obvious. But if you’re serious about dreaming yourself out of ignorance, you have to ask "What takes you out of self-deception? And what just makes you better at lying to yourself?".

Differentiation for the right euphoria .

Because at the end of the day, the difference between true awakening and mental masturbation is the same as the difference between philosophy and a real orgasm. One makes you think about it and the other? Well... the other makes you feel it in your bones.

[Norbert Somogyi]

I admit I don't really have direct experience on this topic, but I have a question:

Isn't the awakening process kind of an upward/downward spiral (depending on how you want to imagine it) swinging between realizing the illusionary nature of reality and then the reality of the illusion? Going back & forth as you go deeper potentially into infinity. Total mindfuckery.