Can direct experience be trusted?

[Truth Addict]

2 minutes ago, ajasatya said:

If direct experience can't be trusted, what can we trust?

Belief.

Since trust is concerned with the future, and so is belief. So, why not?

Edited May 23, 2019 by Truth Addict

[ajasatya]

@Truth Addict I am considering that the OP has gone past beliefs, but not entirely. Thus, he may be confusing direct experience and beliefs.

[Nahm]

25 minutes ago, Truth Addict said:

Everything makes 100% sense except for the bold statement.

Another angle then.... there is no imagined separate self. Try to imagine a separate self right now, and notice that is an image within you - it is not even actually a separate self being imagined. It is imagination, and that is all it is. 

Another.... 

Are you aware?    Yes. 

Can you pinpoint that awareness? Where it begins or ends?     No

So you are awareness which does not begin or end. 

 

[Nahm]

@Beeman “Can direct experience be trusted?”

If direct experience is other than you, it is false and can’t be trusted. If you are direct experience, there is no thing nor reason to “trust”.

[Leo Gura]

Careful! Perception is not actually happening via the brain or the eyeballs. Perception as it is commonly understood is not really happening at all. It's a conceptual scheme you're imagining. BEING is what's really happening, not perception. Perception is BEING co-opted by ego/devil.

Without the ego, perception does not occur. But this doesn't mean that colors and sensations vanish, they simply get recontextualized as something other than "my perceptions".

The very notion of "perception" is already infected with ego because it assumes that perceptions are things which happens to you through your nervous system. This is not actually true. Perceptions are not caused by the nervous system. You merely imagine they are. In fact, you imagine your entire nervous system. "My nervous system" is a sneaky metaphysical construct which you use to ground your sense of reality.

It would be helpful to stop believing in perceptions or a nervous system.

You must completely unground your sense of solid reality. Your mind must become so free that you cannot even tell what a human body or a coffee table is, because those are all conceptual things. You must even forget that you are on a planet Earth or inside a physical universe, since those are all conceptual projections which are grounding the ego.

You must reach a point where your entire sensory field is free of all conceptual interpretations or groundings. At this point, you will not know what anything is. You will look at your hand and not even recognize it as a hand. You will not know what "hands" are. Because "a hand" is actually a conceptual construction. You actually have no idea what that thing called "a hand" is. Even to call it a "thing" is already incorrect.

This is extremely tricky and subtle stuff. I cannot stress that enough.

[CreamCat]

6 hours ago, Shin said:

With faith yes,

Faith requires knowledge, too. You cannot believe or trust something you don't know.

[CreamCat]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

"My nervous system" is a sneaky metaphysical construct which you use to ground your sense of reality.

But, what happens to my vision if my eyes are taken out of my head? The body and the nervous system are somehow involved.

I haven't seen a human who has human perceptions without a human body.

Human body and human perception are like a set menu at McDonald's. God doesn't sell human perception without human body. God also doesn't sell human vision without human eyes. We may replace human eyes with synthetic eyes in the future, though.

If my eyes are just imaginations, why can I not grow back eyes that were taken out of my head? I should be able to imagine it out of nothing. That would be real convenient. You could grow back lost hands, too.

Edited May 23, 2019 by CreamCat

[Leo Gura]

@CreamCat It's all far more twisted than you can imagine.

The fact is, you haven't ever seen "a human" or "yourself". Those are conceptual constructions. You are not a human. Humans are something you made up!

It's rather like Super Mario World. Mario thinks that eating a mushrooms causes him to grow in size, but actually the mushroom has no actual causal effect. It's the computer which is causing the entire world of Mario to act as it does, of which Mario is totally unaware.

[CreamCat]

32 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

actually the mushroom has no actual causal effect.

The game code correlates mushroom with growth. The code seems to be robust and reliable. The code also doesn't allow me to see a shit after my eyes are eliminated.

Edited May 24, 2019 by CreamCat

[Leo Gura]

20 minutes ago, CreamCat said:

The game code correlates mushroom with growth. The code seems to be robust and reliable. The code also doesn't allow me to see a shit after my eyes are eliminated.

You see shit every night in your dreams.

Take enough LSD and you will be able to see through closed eyelids.

Your eyes do not actually "see" anything.

[Matt8800]

@Beeman Is there anything that exists outside your direct experience?

How do you know?

[CreamCat]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

You see shit every night in your dreams.

Take enough LSD and you will be able to see through closed eyelids.

Your eyes do not actually "see" anything.

Man, I should learn to order some LSD with LSD tester online.

[Truth Addict]

7 hours ago, Nahm said:

Can you pinpoint that awareness? Where it begins or ends?     No

So you are awareness which does not begin or end. 

Wrong conclusion.

Just because I can't pinpoint awareness, does not necessarily mean that it's infinite, it just means that my ability to pinpoint is finite, which I assume is the awareness itself.

Why is it so hard for people to accept that we don't actually know?

Edited May 24, 2019 by Truth Addict

[Truth Addict]

2 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

You see shit every night in your dreams.

Take enough LSD and you will be able to see through closed eyelids.

Your eyes do not actually "see" anything.

So eyes don't see anything, and LSD gives vision? How come this is the case?

Isn't that materialism?

[Leo Gura]

2 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

So eyes don't see anything, and LSD gives vision? How come this is the case?

Isn't that materialism?

Everything is consciousness interacting with itself.

LSD doesn't give vision, it just expands and changes what consciousness is doing. It changes the rules by which consciousness operates.

Everything you call material is actually immaterial. A rock is happening in your consciousness.

[Norbert Lennartz]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

Everything is consciousness interacting with itself.

LSD doesn't give vision, it just expands and changes what consciousness is doing. It changes the rules by which consciousness operates.

Everything you call material is actually immaterial. A rock is happening in your consciousness.

Why is everything (that is not especially reflected) not unconsciousness interacting with itself?
Why is a rock not happening in my plus its unconsciousness?

[Leo Gura]

44 minutes ago, Norbert Lennartz said:

Why is everything (that is not especially reflected) not unconsciousness interacting with itself?
Why is a rock not happening in my plus its unconsciousness?

Lol

Because you are conscious!

Consciousness is all there is. There is no such thing as unconsciousness. Unconsciousness is an illusion.

Anything you imagine, including non-existence or unconsciousness is happening within consciousness!

So non-existence is actually impossible. You have to be vary careful here not to conflate objects within consciousness with consciousness itself. Pure empty consciousness cannot be destroyed. Objects within consciousness arise and pass away all the time, like images on a TV screen.

If you're coming from the materialist paradigm, you hold consciousness is a biological product of a material reality. This is completely incorrect. Consciousness is not a biological or even a physical thing. It has nothing to do with your body or brain, or even life.

[Nahm]

8 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

my ability to pinpoint is finite

So you did pinpoint awareness?

[Aeris]

8 hours ago, Truth Addict said:

Wrong conclusion.

Just because I can't pinpoint awareness, does not necessarily mean that it's infinite, it just means that my ability to pinpoint is finite, which I assume is the awareness itself.

Why is it so hard for people to accept that we don't actually know?

11 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

 

14 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

 

That's a good thought.

Finite can look Infinite from a Mario perspective. Because Mario is finite when he Glitch. He believe 'that' is Infinite

[Truth Addict]

7 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

Everything is consciousness interacting with itself.

LSD doesn't give vision, it just expands and changes what consciousness is doing. It changes the rules by which consciousness operates.

Everything you call material is actually immaterial. A rock is happening in your consciousness.

That makes sense. Yet, we can't deny the fact that the eyes are the portals for consciousness to operate in a certain dimension which we call "the visual field" in the ordinary state of consciousness.

I'm not a materialist, the consciousness paradigm makes more sense regarding Truth, but in the practical mundane life, the materialist paradigm is king.

After all, they're all paradigms, and Truth is one and is true. So, I don't think it matters what I think the truth is, because it just is what it is. Yet, I believe that in the future, maybe, we will be able to manipulate reality with thought. Of course, assuming that there will be a future in the first place.

@Nahm I tried, but I failed. I can't pinpoint myself because I'm not a certain material object. Not necessarily because I'm infinite. The awareness that is trying to pinpoint awareness is me, but I am finite, which does not negate that I'm whole.

@Aeris Yes, I think so. But still, they say it's infinite and I couldn't prove it's otherwise yet.

Edited May 24, 2019 by Truth Addict