Are Our Visual Sensations Actually Flat Rather Than 3-Dimensional?

[Joseph Maynor]

I know when you consider tactile sensations, visual sensations can appear to be 3-dimensional.  But is that really true?  Are visual sensations actually flat and not 3-dimensional?

[DocHoliday]

That's an interesting thought. But what differnece would it make to you? Your fundamental perception of the "outside world" would....oh wait, well if it would be flat, you could grab "stuff" that is seemingly a lot further away from you like a tree in the distance or a car on the road or whatever. But since we can't really do that, I think that proves that our visual representation of the world is in fact truly 3-dimensional. But please correct me if I'm wrong here. 

[Joseph Maynor]

Just now, DocHoliday said:

That's an interesting thought. But what differnece would it make to you? Your fundamental perception of the "outside world" would....oh wait, well if it would be flat, you could grab "stuff" that is seemingly a lot further away from you like a tree in the distance or a car on the road or whatever. But since we can't really do that, I think that proves that our visual representation of the world is in fact truly 3-dimensional. But please correct me if I'm wrong here. 

I guess you would have to isolate the visual field from other sensations to investigate this hypothesis.

[Joseph Maynor]

Furthermore -- another hypothesis is that this two-dimensional field is just colors and 2-dimensional shapes.  This thesis needs to be investigated as well.  Put your contemplation hats on and let's see what we can say about these claims.

[zazed]

What we can see with our eyes does not exist at all.

If you follow the scientific explanation.

The size of electrons and protons are so small, an atom is mostly empty space. If you could really see with something smaller than light, you would see tiny dots all around you, buzzing. The entire world would be almost empty. 99% of reality is empty space.
It just happens to be, the wavelength of a photon is such that it bounces on solid objects, and we use this to form vision.

Light has a wavelength of vibration. Atoms have no color, they are colorless. When light bounces of atoms of certain properties, their electrons absorb energy from the foton. This changes the wavelength of the light reflected.

But a wavelength of light, is not inherently a color. The color assignation happens during seeing.
The human brain makes color by interpreting chemical reactions at the back of your eye, being sent to your brain and constructed into an image inside your mind.

Then the mind goes to work, and creates this further into a 3d world. 
Try looking at some objects. A glass, a bottle, a spoon. Especially objects you use a lot. 
They fill your mind like a concept, you have a certain sense of their entire shape, not just what you can see with your eyes alone.
In this way the mind even creates things that do not exist.

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Awesome topic and replies, very cool stuff to contemplate. 

I might just throw all that science right out the window in one context (Thanks Leo, I finally 'got it', that took some contemplation muscle & some time lol, holeee...), and ask this;

What if all those visual goodies were very much 3D, but weren't made of anything.. weren't physical things at all.

What if rather than perceiving 'things' (buildings, roads, cars, trees, dogs, the sky, moon & cosmos, other people, your arms legs, torso & other good parts) from the outside in, you simply, miraculously and mystically created all of it, ALL OF IT, from the inside out. With your perceptions not being perceptions 'of' something, but the perceptions themselves being what all reality is made of?

Oh man, I invite you to have fun with that.

Want some context & framework for that one? -- I like Rupert Spira's take on this: Perception IS reality. Lots on Youtube or the S.A.N.D. site of him discussing the nature of perception and the nature of reality, enjoy if you're so inclined, months of awesome contemplation to be had. Careful now, your mind may get good and fucked.. in the most delicious way. ?

[Nahm]

@Joseph Maynor I don’t think it’s flat or dimensional. I think the observed and the observer are both made of illusionary spacetime, and to create the illusion of depth and distance, time becomes space, and space becomes time. 

[star ark]

2 hours ago, zazed said:

What we can see with our eyes does not exist at all.

If you follow the scientific explanation.

The size of electrons and protons are so small, an atom is mostly empty space. If you could really see with something smaller than light, you would see tiny dots all around you, buzzing. The entire world would be almost empty. 99% of reality is empty space.
It just happens to be, the wavelength of a photon is such that it bounces on solid objects, and we use this to form vision.

Light has a wavelength of vibration. Atoms have no color, they are colorless. When light bounces of atoms of certain properties, their electrons absorb energy from the foton. This changes the wavelength of the light reflected.

But a wavelength of light, is not inherently a color. The color assignation happens during seeing.
The human brain makes color by interpreting chemical reactions at the back of your eye, being sent to your brain and constructed into an image inside your mind.

Then the mind goes to work, and creates this further into a 3d world. 
Try looking at some objects. A glass, a bottle, a spoon. Especially objects you use a lot. 
They fill your mind like a concept, you have a certain sense of their entire shape, not just what you can see with your eyes alone.
In this way the mind even creates things that do not exist.

Wow nice post!

Also in my minds' eye I don't create 3d objects instinctively, when I imagine the object it is 2d until I try really hard to imagine it 3d and even then it's not quite the same. Just look at your surroundings, close your eyes and imagine those exact surrounding and then open your eyes again. My mind has a very hard time reaching the level of 3dness my open eyes do.

[Leo Gura]

Everything is what it is. You see it directly as it is. Trying to add labels to your perceptions doesn't make them any clearer, just the opposite.

"3D" and "2D" are just empty labels, and either way you label it, you mislead yourself.

Just go sit in silence. There is your answer.

[DocHoliday]

@Leo Gura Yes, that's so on point. Many of us like to distract themselves with all kinds of labels and distinctions,
not realising that they are exactly what prevent us from "seeing" the world as it is.
We have to learn to pay less attention to all the small and smaller distinctions and not get hung up on them and much rather take in all of our sensations and experiences holistically.
A metaphor that I like to use is that we have become more and more interested in the differnt layers of the onion, rather than acknowledging the onion as a whole. Once we have experienced the wholeness (and oneness) of everything, then further distinctions and mind-games become so irrelevant. I mean, that's exactly what was meant by one of the quoutes in the beginning of Leo's video "Understanding Meaning, Purpose & Value", saying "Life is so utterly meaningless, it's meaningful". See, it just doesn't matter how you slice up reality and how many times you do so, in the end, everything is just as it is, it won't change. 

Edited January 11, 2018 by DocHoliday

[Leo Gura]

@DocHoliday Because reality is the shortest, most direct articulation of itself.

When you want the highest accuracy, go straight to the source and cut out the middle man (mind/language).

[DocHoliday]

@Leo Gura Exactly, that's why silence (especially verbal silence -> just shutting the fuck up for a while and keeping all the thoughts inside) is such a crucial stepping stone that many just can't implement over a longer period of time that would exceed their personal boundary - people just don't go far enough with this I think. For me, personally, listening to music all day long was what did it for me I guess (that is to say shutting up and keeping thoughts and mental chatter to yourself), although all my enlightenment experiences weren't even attached to the desire or goal of becoming enlightened, so to say. I discovered the entire field of self-help and self-actualization all post-enlightenment, therefore I can only support Peter Ralston and everyone else who says: "Let go of the concept of enlightenment, whatever you think you know about it, forget it". Because, of course, if you don't, you will get completely entangled in it, which is probably where all the vague- and pseudo-spirituality comes from - people just believing stuff or taking it on pure faith and thus, creating their own little spiritual realm of what they think is truly real and tangible.  

Edited January 11, 2018 by DocHoliday

[FirstglimpseOMG]

But Leo... (& DocHoliday)...

Do we always go to the biggest picture possible? The largest context? I guess if you can, you do, but what about those of us who may not be able yet to experience reality with any consistency in a non-symbolic manner? I'm not sure about a great many aspects of non-duality, but as I work and play towards the deepest realizations, am I remiss in feeling (not just believing, by now, I think lol), that this finite bodymind was in-formed by pure, loving, empty (full, full, full) consciousness, and continues to co-create 'reality' from a limited perspective. I may be still climbing a tenacious and wobbly, creaky scaffolding, but it's all I got man, I can't toss it yet! 

Or can I.... won't I just faaaallll down to full-on, crappy ol' consensus reaity again? Sure, I'd love to just crash beautifully and effortlessly into the Godhead but I haven't sourced any good psychedelics lately, and my meditation practice needs much more work.

I kind of struggle, wondering, in the presence of folks further along the path, if I'm remiss in my approach here, and just hanging onto arbitrary, small-minded aspects of the much bigger context of all this. I have a wonderful, all-encompassing, awesome, unbelievable, understanding of non-duality and my True nature, but I struggle to realize (okay, actualize) this.  

I could very well just be lazy and subsequently still quite deluded of course. Love the discourse though, thank you all.

(I know, I know, how about just shutting up & meditating?) ?

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Maybe 5-me0 time has come, I am researching effective sourcing of this stuff, but that's another thread...

[Space]

13 hours ago, zazed said:

The human brain makes color by interpreting chemical reactions at the back of your eye, being sent to your brain and constructed into an image inside your mind.

I've always been confused by this. Correct me if i'm wrong, but is this not just a support for materialism? That everything we perceive is actually happening inside the brain. What is the source of the image inside your brain? And surely the brain itself must also be included into what is happening inside the brain?

[DocHoliday]

 

24 minutes ago, FirstglimpseOMG said:

But Leo... (& DocHoliday)...

Do we always go to the biggest picture possible? The largest context? I guess if you can, you do, but what about those of us who may not be able yet to experience reality with any consistency in a non-symbolic manner? I'm not sure about a great many aspects of non-duality, but as I work and play towards the deepest realizations, am I remiss in feeling (not just believing, by now, I think lol), that this finite bodymind was in-formed by pure, loving, empty (full, full, full) consciousness, and continues to co-create 'reality' from a limited perspective. I may be still climbing a tenacious and wobbly, creaky scaffolding, but it's all I got man, I can't toss it yet! 

Or can I.... won't I just faaaallll down to full-on, crappy ol' consensus reaity again? Sure, I'd love to just crash beautifully and effortlessly into the Godhead but I haven't sourced any good psychedelics lately, and my meditation practice needs much more work.

I kind of struggle, wondering, in the presence of folks further along the path, if I'm remiss in my approach here, and just hanging onto arbitrary, small-minded aspects of the much bigger context of all this. I have a wonderful, all-encompassing, awesome, unbelievable, understanding of non-duality and my True nature, but I struggle to realize (okay, actualize) this.  

I could very well just be lazy and subsequently still quite deluded of course. Love the discourse though, thank you all.

(I know, I know, how about just shutting up & meditating?) ?

@FirstglimpseOMG I gotta say, this is the first time I'm responding to someone else's post about non-duality and enlightenment where he is asking for further clarification, so I have to say that I, personally, find it difficult and most importantly dangerous to advise others on this topic and their journey because I have the notion that most of the times people will only become more mislead by even more waypoints or guidances. But, what I can tell you is that you don't need to distinguish between "ordinary" consciousness and "higher" consciousness, that's why I highlighted your sentence. Non-duality will reveal to you that there is no particluar difference between them, what you're experiencing right now this very second is it, it's all that there is, ever was and ever will be. Elightenment, to me, is just the degree to which you can realise this and distance "yourself" from it, meaning how much can you depersonalize your subjective experience, so that you become free of egoic limitations and boundaries and simply "let the moment be as it is". That's why reality is a strange loop - you depersonalize it to such a degree that it becomes personal again, but now, you simply don't cling to it anymore, your identification with it has vanished. So, even when you don't let it be as it is, that is still the experience of the Absolute - that's why you cannot escape it or attain it, because it's always there. You're free, bruh.  All the time... 

[FirstglimpseOMG]

@DocHoliday  Well, your response is certainly appreciated. Every tidbit of real wisdom helps, it may be incremental, but it all goes in, thank you. 

[FirstglimpseOMG]

Ah... my distinctions ARE quite arbitrary...

[FirstglimpseOMG]

...Just realizing it for the eighteen-hundredth time...

[DocHoliday]

@FirstglimpseOMG They surely are Let it sink in deeper and keep surrendering to it, then Truth will come to you.