Why does everything seem to be so consistent, if all there is is perception?

[Paulus Amadeus]

Why do things seem to function according to certain laws, if there is nothing ‘behind the scenes’?

why is my house there every time I get back from work?

all there is is perception right? There is only this moment.

so why does my house appear every time I expect it to appear?

after all, there are no atoms that make up my house, and there is no world for my house to stand in!

is it because god thinks it’s fun to dream a consistent dream?

the ‘god wants it this way’ answer however could be applied to every question ever though. It’s not that satisfying.

Anyone have a good explanation?

 

[Paulus Amadeus]

@Leo Gura, do you have an answer for my above question? I would really love to get your take. 

[aclokay]

I'm not going to answer any of these, but I will mention something relevant:
This is a talk by Paul Fleischman about the topic of Karma and Chaos, where some things seem completely crazy, and other relatively normal

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oh-Iraf0-ns

[Paulus Amadeus]

@aclokay hmm I watched it a bit, but it didn’t seem to answer my question.

[LastThursday]

@Paulus Amadeus here's a few ideas to think about:

a. All perception is chaos. The only thing that's consistent is your memory. Your memory defines a template for your perceptions to "fit into". In other words it simplifies the chaos by categorising it.  For example, the category of "cat" is simple and consistent, but the actuallity of the perception of a cat is different every time.

b. More radical. Your intuition about consistency is wrong. Consistency is just an awareness like everything else, and is therefore prone to misinterpretation. In other words you think or feel that your house is always the same house in the same place, but you're deluded. For example the street changes with the seasons, the house falls apart without maintenance etc. Is it really your house?

c. Even more radical. You (God) are experiencing everything at once (the entirety of existence). But to make a nice story out of it, the creator of the dream does a pick and mix of perceptions from the whole of reality and weaves them together into a consistent story about you (your life).

I like C. Just think, if C wasn't true then everything would be chaos and inconsistent and you wouldn't be aware of anything at all.

[Forestluv]

@Paulus Amadeus Consistency is part perception. Part of what you refer to as consistency are neurological “brain maps”. This allows the mind to create consistent images of physical things such as trees, signs and buildings. This allows the mind to filter out the majority of your perceptual field so the mind only has to process a small portion. Most of your visual perception is internal brain activity. . . As well, each of your senses is processed at a different rate. It takes your brain about 0.5 sec. to coordinate all the senses to give the perception that everything is happening together “now”.

We can scramble these maps using psychedelics. As well, different organisms have very different perceptions. . . . Imagine having the following perception: 1 min psychedelic, 1 min dog, 1 min ant, 1 min. schizophrenic, 1 min. lucid dream, 1 min. “normal” human. This 6 min. cycle repeats over and over in random order. How consistent would perception be?

[Scholar]

lol, there is no good explanation other than magic.

 

What Leo calls perception includes everything you consider non-perception, that is the entire point. It does not exclude anything. Perception is another word for Isness, and because most of Isness we already call Perception, the mind has chosen to simply frame it within that already present story.

Edited October 14, 2019 by Scholar

[Jakeem Ortiz]

I actually recently became conscious of this answer and it has to do with the notions absolute infinity and infinite consciousness. Consciousness being what it is and the unfalsifiability of all fundamental views of reality like Solipsism, idealism and materialism.

The answer was so abstract that at this moment I won't be able to give a good coherent explanation as I am not directly conscious of this truth anymore. All I can tell you now is that you asked a really good question and there is a complete satisfactory answer to this which thus far has not been elucidated in any of the previous replies in this thread.

[MAYA EL]

On 10/13/2019 at 3:45 PM, Paulus Amadeus said:

Why do things seem to function according to certain laws, if there is nothing ‘behind the scenes’?

why is my house there every time I get back from work?

all there is is perception right? There is only this moment.

so why does my house appear every time I expect it to appear?

after all, there are no atoms that make up my house, and there is no world for my house to stand in!

is it because god thinks it’s fun to dream a consistent dream?

the ‘god wants it this way’ answer however could be applied to every question ever though. It’s not that satisfying.

Anyone have a good explanation?

 

I believe the problem lies in the concept you are holding as true.

The concept that everything is an illusion is based off of how the mechanics of the human mind work and how we process light as it enters our eyes but by no means should be taken as the world itself is an illusion like an Xbox game. Any question anybody will ever have about life can be answered by observing life in the moment so to answer your question forget all opinions and just observe right now.

[Paulus Amadeus]

@LastThursday yeah C makes the most sense to me too. But then you are basically using the same argument that a Christian dude from the Middle Ages would use. Why does the sun rise? Because god wants it too rise. This seems a bit regressive. But if it’s true, it’s true I guess.

@Serotoninluv this is interesting, but now you make the brain into the ‘stuff behind the scenes’. I guess you don’t agree with Leo’s video ‘’why brains don’t exist’’?

@Scholar yes but why does this isness seem so predictable?

@Jakeem Ortiz nice reply . Please message me once you can put it into words!!

@MAYA EL that you can get an answer to all your questions by observing the present moment is also a concept. So now that we are in concept land, would be cool to know why experience is so consistent

[Forestluv]

24 minutes ago, Paulus Amadeus said:

 

@Serotoninluv this is interesting, but now you make the brain into the ‘stuff behind the scenes’. I guess you don’t agree with Leo’s video ‘’why brains don’t exist’’?

Existence vs non-existence is a duality. . . Dualities can have practical purpose, for example if someone needed to have a brain tumor removed, it would be practical to choose a brain surgeon that believes brains exist.

All dualities have an infinite number of inter-connections. Such that the duality simultaneously IS and IS NOT. Ultimately, all dualities collapse. Human minds are programmed to think in opposites and become attached to one side of a duality. For example, most humans believe that brains exist and saying that brains don't exist is woo woo nonsense. Here it is helpful to show them the other side of the duality, that brains do not exist. Perhaps the most effective way to do this is to go "all in" on brains do not exist. If a person can see the other side of the duality, it opens up a whole new arena of exploration. Yet tendency for the human mind is to become attached to the other side of the duality. "If brains don't exist is true then brains exist must be false". The next stage is to recognize the paradox that brains exist and don't exist. . . So I don't disagree with Leo's video "why brains don't exist". . . If someone could only see the "heads" side of a coin, we might make a video called "why heads doesn't exist". This could help the person see the tails side. The next step is to see that the whole coin is both heads and tails. Yet this is much more difficult since humans are conditioned to think in opposites and have a very difficult time with paradoxes. 

Another answer would simply be that it's all a dream. . . 

[Paulus Amadeus]

@Serotoninluv that is an interesting point. So you are saying that although there is no stuff behind the scenes, there also is? But I don’t really think that’s how it works. If Leo says ‘’there is no material world’’, then it is not implied that there also is one at the same time. Reality just happens to be mind stuff! 

On the dream point: I agree! But why is the dream so consistent? What makes it consistent?

[Forestluv]

1 hour ago, Paulus Amadeus said:

@Serotoninluv that is an interesting point. So you are saying that although there is no stuff behind the scenes, there also is? But I don’t really think that’s how it works. If Leo says ‘’there is no material world’’, then it is not implied that there also is one at the same time. Reality just happens to be mind stuff! 

On the dream point: I agree! But why is the dream so consistent? What makes it consistent?

There are many constructs we could create. I offered a construct that could be interpreted as material neuroscience, neurotransmitters etc. We could create other constructs that would be considered immaterial. We could also create constructs that are hybrids of material / immaterial. Or we could drop the categories referred to as "material" and "immaterial". Material = Immaterial. We are creating distinctions. That's just what humans do. 

Why is the dream so consistent? What makes it consistent? We can create all sorts of constructs to answer that question. It's all relative. . . You are creating a dream that appears consistent relative to you. How are You doing it? How could You create a dream that appears inconsistent relative to you? . . . It's so mysterious, isn't it? We could say it is impossible, magical. It sounds like you want to know how the magic trick works. . . 

 

[Leo Gura]

It's consistent for the same reason a novelist or screenwriter strives to make his writing consistent -- so that you think it is real.

That's how illusions are made.

[daramantus]

On 10/14/2019 at 3:02 PM, LastThursday said:

@Paulus Amadeus

c. Even more radical. You (---) are --- everything at once (the entirety of existence). But to make a nice story out of it, the creator of the dream does a pick and mix of perceptions from the whole of reality and weaves them together into a consistent story about you (your life).

 

I know you gave a nonsensical radical hypothesis, but it's complete woo. First, we see things, we don't always "experience", let alone "entirety", you don't even see or experience the entirety of your computer of phone, let alone of your room, I won't even mention of your house. This whole omniscience is complete woo and false and obviously proven wrong by absolute common evidence, it's not even a debate, so I guess this is more like a radical hypothesis for a sci fi movie that even as a sci fi movie wouldn't work as a good script. And don't even get me started with this whole distorted definition of 'you', vs 'you' with capital letter, this just sustain woo

Edited October 16, 2019 by daramantus

[daramantus]

The reason it's consistent it's because reality works, no matter what you think in your subjective mind-world. And if one is giving excuses to it, you bet they are running from occam's razor and with personal reasons about the deepest of the deepest facts  rooted down facts about the deepest layer rooted in all existence, that reality, besides being separated from you, is not an illusion and never was, let alone a dream.

[RichardY]

Intrinsic projection of reality.

[Scholar]

15 hours ago, Paulus Amadeus said:

@Scholar yes but why does this isness seem so predictable?

Why wouldn't it?

[LastThursday]

19 hours ago, daramantus said:

I know you gave a nonsensical radical hypothesis, but it's complete woo.

I'm not wedded to the idea personally, I just gave a shopping list for contemplation.

I may have conflated God and you and omniscience and that made it unpalatable to you. The idea was that there are an infinite number of strands of consistent stories and that you could be one of them. But all the strands together make "God".

Anyway, here's another one for fun (I'm full of them):

d. There is no consistency whatsoever in awareness and perception (i.e. it's all chaos, random). But. There is one exception. There is a singular source of unchanging "sameness" in awareness which pervades everything. You tap into this "sameness" source when you feel things are "consistent" or the the "same" or anything you feel you "know". In other words it's the sensation of familiarity. That familiarity can be about anything or everything, but the underlying cause or source is "sameness". It similar to the idea of the number "2", there are many things that there are two of, but there is an underlying twoness which ties them all together. The "sameness" source is the glue that holds together reality, without it it's chaos.

[MAYA EL]

On 10/15/2019 at 3:39 PM, Paulus Amadeus said:

@LastThursday yeah C makes the most sense to me too. But then you are basically using the same argument that a Christian dude from the Middle Ages would use. Why does the sun rise? Because god wants it too rise. This seems a bit regressive. But if it’s true, it’s true I guess.

@Serotoninluv this is interesting, but now you make the brain into the ‘stuff behind the scenes’. I guess you don’t agree with Leo’s video ‘’why brains don’t exist’’?

@Scholar yes but why does this isness seem so predictable?

@Jakeem Ortiz nice reply . Please message me once you can put it into words!!

@MAYA EL that you can get an answer to all your questions by observing the present moment is also a concept. So now that we are in concept land, would be cool to know why experience is so consistent

No actually observing the here and now is not a concept although it may sound like it but that is just the unfortunate part of language is that I have to communicate something to you in order to get my point across however the act of observing the moment is done with a clear mind and no concepts /judgements of any kind.

I think you don't  quite comprehend what a "concept " is although feel free to Google it and copy and paste it in your reply so that we all assume you remembered it in such an organized manner.