Enlightenment And Solipsism

[Curious]

Hi there,

I have stumbled a comment from Leo in the forum :

"Of course it isn't real [external world]! That's what non-duality is.

Non-duality is basically idealism or solipsism in practice. There is no evidence whatsoever of an external reality. That's a fiction rendered by the mind.

This is a RADICAL paradigm shift.

This is not something you should believe. But actually realize for yourself."

I would like to start a discussion about this, because this is a big claim to make. I mean, why would you ever want to realize that you are everything and therefore alone. That doesn't sound like true happiness to me, rather the opposite. And that really sounds like the end-all be-all of rationalism too (I think therefore I am).

Can anybody enlighten me (haha) about this issue ? Is that what enlightenment leads you to - realizing that you are everything, therefore the only thing ?

And on a side note, why would Leo (or any spiritual gurus) even bother talking to anybody, believing (or apparently knowing/realizing) that everything is just a projection of their consciousness ?

Thank you for your time

[nbolt]

"and therefore alone" seems like an unnecessary addition to the statement. Leo emphasizes to take practical approaches to everything and practically of course you are not alone, there are seven billion other people on the planet. This is more of an internal philosophical framework to live your life by.

[Guest]

@Curious30 Of course there is an external reality.  There is an inside world and an outside world.  There are objective truths like, there are 4 trees in my garden.  Subjective truth is whatever you understand to be true for you, your interpretations.

Everybody has their internal world and projects their internal picture onto the external world according to how differentiated (the more nuanced) their internal system gets.

"Enlightenment" experiences help to mine more information and can serve to "re-programme" or "purify" the self concept and grow it into a more expansive model.

The "ego" is the map you have, suspending the map and allowing room for new information to come in and grow the self concept beyond its current way of making sense of existence is spiritual growth.

The concept of a fixed realization is garbage. 

 

 

 

[Emerald]

1 hour ago, Curious30 said:

Hi there,

I have stumbled a comment from Leo in the forum :

"Of course it isn't real [external world]! That's what non-duality is.

Non-duality is basically idealism or solipsism in practice. There is no evidence whatsoever of an external reality. That's a fiction rendered by the mind.

This is a RADICAL paradigm shift.

This is not something you should believe. But actually realize for yourself."

I would like to start a discussion about this, because this is a big claim to make. I mean, why would you ever want to realize that you are everything and therefore alone. That doesn't sound like true happiness to me, rather the opposite. And that really sounds like the end-all be-all of rationalism too (I think therefore I am).

Can anybody enlighten me (haha) about this issue ? Is that what enlightenment leads you to - realizing that you are everything, therefore the only thing ?

And on a side note, why would Leo (or any spiritual gurus) even bother talking to anybody, believing (or apparently knowing/realizing) that everything is just a projection of their consciousness ?

Thank you for your time

I think that the difference is to realize that you really don't know whether or not there is an external reality beyond your subjective experience. Solipsism is a belief that there is not. Enlightenment entails realizing that you don't know one way or another.

[abrakamowse]

@Curious30  What is your definition of real? It looks real too me... but what it means to be real?

 

"Do you think is air what you are breathing now?"

[SkyPanther]

3 hours ago, Curious30 said:

Hi there,

I have stumbled a comment from Leo in the forum :

"Of course it isn't real [external world]! That's what non-duality is.

Non-duality is basically idealism or solipsism in practice. There is no evidence whatsoever of an external reality. That's a fiction rendered by the mind.

This is a RADICAL paradigm shift.

This is not something you should believe. But actually realize for yourself."

I would like to start a discussion about this, because this is a big claim to make. I mean, why would you ever want to realize that you are everything and therefore alone. That doesn't sound like true happiness to me, rather the opposite. And that really sounds like the end-all be-all of rationalism too (I think therefore I am).

Can anybody enlighten me (haha) about this issue ? Is that what enlightenment leads you to - realizing that you are everything, therefore the only thing ?

And on a side note, why would Leo (or any spiritual gurus) even bother talking to anybody, believing (or apparently knowing/realizing) that everything is just a projection of their consciousness ?

Thank you for your time

I think this can be summed up like this:

You, I, everything that exists is made of atoms.  They have substance, you can feel them, they are "real" (that is your eyes and brain perceive them).

But atoms are not "real" in the sense of the concept.  The concept of atoms is made by our mind. In reality it is just vibrations/energy/pattern. And all of those words are also concepts. They are not "real".  They exist in our collective knowledge as ideas, and concepts.   People confuse these as "the real world".  In reality they are concepts.

As for non-dualism, that too is a concept.  But it is an interesting one.  Can you have a positive poll without a negative poll on a magnet? Can you know what "light" is without "dark" (really photons hitting your eye, which is interpreted in a certain way by the brain to show you light/color, "light" is really a narrow band on the electromagnetic spectrum made of a prism of "colors" which are really the frequency of a wave).

Can you understand "up" without "down"?  Can you differentiate "good" if there is no "bad"?  Without its "opposite" the other makes no sense. Consciousness/Ego needs to measure things to make sense of it. The "I like it, I don't like it, I neither like nor dislike it mind"    But in reality they are all connected, or "dependently arisen".  So in a sense they are both "separate" and "one", just like in quantum physics a particle is both a discrete particle and a probability wave.

And you can go down the list and see this is true everything.  Time is a concept, there is no past, or future, there is only "now", which is always in flux. 

"Life" (it is "life" as we know it on this planet) is a concept, etc, etc... 

Edited March 23, 2016 by SkyPanther