How can one know the truth of one's insight?

[Meister_Eckhart]

Let's say you contemplate something. Or you take some psychedelic. An insight into some matter comes up for you. For example, you start to see that everything is one. You feel in your gut that this insight is true and from now on you live your life accordingly.

But - how do you know whether or not this insight is actually true? Couldn't it be that it's just another perspective that suits you at this time? Something that makes you feel really good and special for having this perspective? People have lots of different insights, I wonder how to distinguish between fantasy and the truth of it.

[Adamq8]

I think you can distinguish it from the intensity of the insight somehow, my deepest insights as of yet has almost hit me in my face and I got shocked,  other insights can be like ahaa moments, I do feel that when a insight of truth hits you it vibrates at a much higher rate then a smaller insight. 

 

[Someone here]

33 minutes ago, Meister_Eckhart said:

But - how do you know whether or not this insight is actually true? Couldn't it be that it's just another perspective that suits you at this time? Something that makes you feel really good and special for having this perspective? People have lots of different insights, I wonder how to distinguish between fantasy and the truth of it.

There is two levels of truth.. Conceptual truths and ultimate truth.  Conceptual truths are always partial and relative statements. Any truth that you can put into words is not absolutely true.. If you say everything is one.. That also means everything is infinite.. Is two.. Is three.. all a matter of perspective. Conceptual oneness doesn't make sense without the  concept of manyness.  What is one without not-one? 

So ultimately all conceptual insights are not ultimately true and can't be. They might be conditionally true tho. So all insights are half true and half fantasy. 

Then you have the ultimate truth itself which is not anything you can say or think or figure out. And This is it. 

[Leo Gura]

@Meister_Eckhart How do you know anything?

The problem here is that you're taking knowledge for granted. You've never bothered to wonder how knowledge is possible at all and what makes it tick.

Spend a few years contemplating that.

[Someone here]

16 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Meister_Eckhart How do you know anything?

The problem here is that you're taking knowledge for granted. You've never bothered to wonder how knowledge is possible at all and what makes it tick.

Spend a few years contemplating that.

How? 

The way i see it knowledge is illusory. From the absolute perspective. 

Who knows what? If everything is ONE.. Who would be standing outside of everything to know it?  Knowing should ultimately collapse into being. 

[Leo Gura]

@Someone here You can say those words, but do you really have deep experience of how knowledge functions?

Be careful just parroting things you heard some other human say.

It is not enough to talk math. You must do math to understand it.

[Someone here]

6 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

You can say those words, but do you really have deep experience of how knowledge functions?

Well as I said there is two ways of looking at it.. Relatively speaking if we agree there is a knower and a known.. There is knowledge through the senses..and through logical facilities . That's all nice in the relative world.  How exactly does that work I have no idea. It's the same thing for everything else.. I could say it's a pure irreducible miracle that anything works at all.

I have a grown nondual understanding also.. And I fully understand that reality is ONE thing.. From this perspective knowing is illusory because it's a distinction. There is only being. 

And nah I'm not just parroting this stuff. I'm fully getting it. ?

[evgn]

42 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

@Meister_Eckhart

Spend a few years contemplating that.

Its sounds as though Zen master is saying that

[Leo Gura]

42 minutes ago, Someone here said:

Well as I said there is two ways of looking at it.. Relatively speaking if we agree there is a knower and a known.. There is knowledge through the senses..and through logical facilities . That's all nice in the relative world.  How exactly does that work I have no idea. It's the same thing for everything else.. I could say it's a pure irreducible miracle that anything works at all.

I have a grown nondual understanding also.. And I fully understand that reality is ONE thing.. From this perspective knowing is illusory because it's a distinction. There is only being. 

And nah I'm not just parroting this stuff. I'm fully getting it. ?

Sounds like a crock of bullshit to me.

But, hey, I could be wrong.

[Meister_Eckhart]

1 hour ago, Leo Gura said:

@Meister_Eckhart How do you know anything?

The problem here is that you're taking knowledge for granted. You've never bothered to wonder how knowledge is possible at all and what makes it tick.

Spend a few years contemplating that.

The longer I think about it the more confused I get.

One conventional answer comes up:

It seems to me that, mostly, we interpret our observations and experiences, we store those as concepts in our memory, and we test that with reality (confirming a concept we hold, perhaps recognizing it). From this, there builds up a sense of knowing. But is that real knowing? I don't think so because it's always based on past experience and we can't really know if the past equals the present, can we? And besides, it could be biased - for example someone having the 'insight' that the earth is flat (let's say it's round) because it suits the person to be a different thinker, or whatever.

It seems that all indirect knowing depends on our trust in the source of information (perception, interpretation, logic, etc.). I wonder how this knowing is then different from belief.

So perhaps, we can only really know something through the often mentioned 'direct experience'. The problem, I don't know what that is. If perception is not direct, then I don't recall a moment I had a direct experience. Do you?

[Someone here]

5 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Sounds like a crock of bullshit to me.

But, hey, I could be wrong.

 LOL you have to do it this way right? ?

I guess you are wrong then (you didn't explain your position anyways you just said go contemplate it)

.   You tell me who is it that knows and where is the boundaries between the knower and the known? What I'm saying is there is only absolute knowledge which is direct being itself. There is no knowing via duality or a medium of separation.  That's what nonduality entails.  That's absolute knowledge that cannot be false because it's direct.  If we assume separation then all sorts of "how do you REALLY know" nonsense questions start arising which are just based on false assumptions. Aye 

[Leo Gura]

@Meister_Eckhart Drop coventional answers and look at what is true.

What is true???!!! Seriously! Stop fucking around. Locate truth in your experience.

Does truth exist?

If so, where is it found?

Don't speculate. Find it!

[justfortoday]

1 hour ago, Someone here said:

 LOL you have to do it this way right? ?

I guess you are wrong then (you didn't explain your position anyways you just said go contemplate it)

.   You tell me who is it that knows and where is the boundaries between the knower and the known? What I'm saying is there is only absolute knowledge which is direct being itself. There is no knowing via duality or a medium of separation.  That's what nonduality entails.  That's absolute knowledge that cannot be false because it's direct.  If we assume separation then all sorts of "how do you REALLY know" nonsense questions start arising which are just based on false assumptions. Aye 

You’re getting too caught up in concepts that will lead you nowhere good. Same with your thread about how to have a “mystical” experience.

Are you trying to get somewhere in your inquiry? There is nowhere to get to.

Your existence alone is a mystical experience. Everything around you is magic in motion.

Knowledge is not truth. 

You can get this intellectually, but it doesn’t seem like you’ve experienced truth.

Truth is shocking. It will stop you dead in your tracks. You will not seek anything after experiencing truth.

[Forestluv]

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

Well as I said there is two ways of looking at it.. Relatively speaking if we agree there is a knower and a known.. There is knowledge through the senses..and through logical facilities . That's all nice in the relative world.  How exactly does that work I have no idea. 

To say you have "no idea" isn't quite fair. If someone held three grains of sand, it's not precisely fair to say they have no beach. Technically, they are holding three grains of beach. Yet since this is less than 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000001% of beach, it is essentially zero and we can round off to zero.

A contraction of the mind is that it hyper focuses on the three grains of sand it holds. In this contraction, the three grains of sand is 100% of the sand in the hand. Within this contraction, one might say "I am holding 100% of sand. I get it". As well, the mind tends to get attached and identified to the few grains of sand it holds and extrapolates / normalizes it. 

What you write is indeed grains of sand, yet in the bigger picture is essentially nothing. Here, you are being offered another grain of sand. You can boost yourself up to holding four grains of sand if you like - yet the bigger realization is becoming aware of the infinite beach (each concept of the beach is merely a grain of sand. 

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

I have a grown nondual understanding also.. And I fully understand that reality is ONE thing.. From this perspective knowing is illusory because it's a distinction. There is only being. 

Saying "I have a grown nondual understanding and I fully understand" indicates a contraction into partial nondual understanding. 

3 hours ago, Someone here said:

And nah I'm not just parroting this stuff. I'm fully getting it. ?

Three grains of sand will appear as "fully getting it" to a mind contracted within those three grains of sand, since the three grains of sand is 100% of the sand the person is holding. Yet such a mind has not transcended the grains of sand it holds. 

2 hours ago, Someone here said:

What I'm saying is there is only absolute knowledge which is direct being itself. There is no knowing via duality or a medium of separation.  That's what nonduality entails.  That's absolute knowledge that cannot be false because it's direct.  If we assume separation then all sorts of "how do you REALLY know" nonsense questions start arising which are just based on false assumptions. 

We can say that grain of sand is true as that grain of sand. That grain of sand is also beach, yet it is not the beach. 

[Someone here]

37 minutes ago, justfortoday said:

but it doesn’t seem like you’ve experienced truth.

It's not possible to experience falsehood. 

[Someone here]

@Forestluv you are right. There is always more to get. Just offering my perspective on the subject. That's one way to look at it. There is infinite more ways ofcourse. BUT they are all at the level of concept.. At the level of direct experience the three grains of sand are all of reality at the moment that you are holding them. There is indeed infinite more grains of sand... Only as concepts.. Until you experience them directly. ?

[justfortoday]

10 minutes ago, Someone here said:

It's not possible to experience falsehood. 

Of course it is. What is the ego then?

[Forestluv]

22 minutes ago, Someone here said:

@Forestluv you are right. There is always more to get. Just offering my perspective on the subject. That's one way to look at it. There is infinite more ways ofcourse. BUT they are all at the level of concept.. At the level of direct experience the three grains of sand are all of reality at the moment that you are holding them. There is indeed infinite more grains of sand... Only as concepts.. Until you experience them directly. ?

That is one of the three grains of sand you are holding. I don't disagree with that. There is insight and value in that grain of sand. The question is whether the mind thinks 

4 hours ago, Someone here said:

I'm fully getting it. ?

That will contract the mind within the grains of sand it holds. Some minds become mesmerized by those grains of sand and become limited. Other minds are curious and want to explore the beach. From my POV, you think you *get* the beach, yet it is only an image in a grain of sand you hold. Notice how the mind is contextualizing this pointer within a grain of sand it already holds. This is distinct form realizing "OMG!!!!!! There is more beach beyond the sand I hold!!!!". This realization is not easy and there can be a high price to pay. 

Again, it's great to explore grains of sand one holds. Yet perhaps the actual beach hasn't been revealed to you yet. You still seem to be working within concepts and theory (even when you conceptualize about non-concepts and non-theory <= That is still conceptualization and theory. It's great stuff and I think you are sharing some conceptual insights - and that conceptual framework is key to integrated direct experience, yet it is contracted. To me, it seems like you are trying to imagine and conceptualize direct experience - rather than the actual direct experience trying to communicate itself. These are very different orientations. 

And by "direct experience" I'm not referring to the traditional sense of "experience" simply as feelings and experiential memories. 

[Someone here]

3 minutes ago, justfortoday said:

Of course it is. What is the ego then?

A thought. An experience. A sensation behind the eyes somewhere. Does that make the ego true or false? Or maybe it's true and false considering that this sensation comes and goes?.  And so whatever Is present is true. If it's not presently experienced it's false. 

[justfortoday]

11 minutes ago, Someone here said:

A thought. An experience. A sensation behind the eyes somewhere. Does that make the ego true or false? Or maybe it's true and false considering that this sensation comes and goes?.  And so whatever Is present is true. If it's not presently experienced it's false. 

You’re saying the ego is an “experience”. The ego is false. Therefore, it is possible to experience falsehood.

Unless you think the ego is truth.