"Your hand is imaginary"

[WokeBloke]

"Take your hand and hold it up to your face. Look at it. Your hand is imaginary." - Leo

Please defend this claim with a clear definition of the word imaginary. 

 

 

 

Edited June 3, 2022 by WokeBloke

[amanen]

It's real in that you can actually experience it.

It's imaginary in that you as God are hallucinating it with your endless imagination, because reality is God's imagination.

It's also imaginary in that if you wanted to, and were in a high enough state of consciousness, you could change your hand into anything else.

You have to become directly conscious of this to understand what I mean though.

[WokeBloke]

3 minutes ago, amanen said:

It's real in that you can actually experience it.

It's imaginary in that you as God are hallucinating it with your endless imagination, because reality is God's imagination.

It's also imaginary in that if you wanted to, and were in a high enough state of consciousness, you could change your hand into anything else.

You have to become directly conscious of this to understand what I mean though.

Why do you equate your imagination with reality?

What evidence do you have of your claim that you could turn your hand into something else?

And what is your definition of imaginary?

[RMQualtrough]

5 minutes ago, WokeBloke said:

Why do you equate your imagination with reality?

What evidence do you have of your claim that you could turn your hand into something else?

And what is your definition of imaginary?

You're slipping away from reality bro.

Remember middle school science class. Light bounces off the hand, into the eye, signal to the brain, the brain produces an image. You aren't looking at your hand, you're seeing an imaginary representation of it.

There's no reason the representation must look the way that it does. I can confirm drug trip frog paws were still functional. A sober person beside me would ofc not see the frog paw hands I am.

[Breakingthewall]

there is no essential difference between your hand or the air around it, or the emptiness of space. they are all made of the same substance, which is nothing. there is an apparent difference. a proton is a shape in nothing. your hand is a very complex shape in nothing. any form is creating itself. imagining is a good word. you and everything that exists are forms in nothing, so it can be said that everything is imaginary. they imagine themselves since whoever imagines is nothing. so your hand is imaginary, or your hand is nothing, or your hand is god

[Michael Jackson]

12 hours ago, WokeBloke said:

Why do you equate your imagination with reality?

What evidence do you have of your claim that you could turn your hand into something else?

And what is your definition of imaginary?

As he stated this is something that you become directly conscious of. It will make absolutely no sense unless you see the magic yourself.

Let me try to explain: Imagine a horse right now. Done? Alright. Is your imagination "a horse?" Well not until you forgot that you imagined it (for example in your dream at night). In your night dream a "horse" seems pretty real and solid although you imagined it.

Same thing with day-to day waking life. Physical objects are nothing but your imagination. You are the dreamer. You are God. When you imagine a hand it comes into existence immediately.

[Gesundheit2]

The hand exercise is not meant to convince you logically. It's meant to open up your mind to the possibility of something beyond logic.

Your hand is imaginary means that your hand is not a material thing. But don't make this imagination pointer into another materialistic concept.

Personally, I would not recommend using that pointer (imagination), though. Because it's not accurate. Hence, you're here posing this objection. Instead, I would use Zen pointers to help you deconstruct your mind. Then after that, you're free to construct whatever you want.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Gesundheit2

[ZzzleepingBear]

20 hours ago, WokeBloke said:

"Take your hand and hold it up to your face. Look at it. Your hand is imaginary." - Leo

Please defend this claim with a clear definition of the word imaginary. 

 

 

 

You can imagine that it is imaginary...

But you probably wouldn't hold it over a flame for to long though.

[_Archangel_]

21 hours ago, WokeBloke said:

"Take your hand and hold it up to your face. Look at it. Your hand is imaginary." - Leo

Please defend this claim with a clear definition of the word imaginary. 

@WokeBlokeImmaginary means produced/made of mental processes that produce a structure "the hand" that can be broke down in other min-structures, that can in turn be broken down in other sub-structures and so on to infinity. Every object therefore is made of / created by an Infinite Principle that can be said to be at the baseless base of reality.
Be ignorant of these processes and only looking at the "hand" led peple to believe in the materialistic paradigm ("There is a solid world indipendent of me, in which, I, as a separate entity am born into and that i interact with").

So Immaginary means created/produced/fabricated by/made of the Infinite Groundless Principle at the base. There is no material base. "material" can be deconstructed to infinity. It is just a mental structure
As you can notice this is a duality as well, but for the sake of the discussion duality must be made.
Ultimately form is infinity, Samsara is Nirvana, the notion of "creation" is itself illusory.

21 hours ago, RMQualtrough said:

Remember middle school science class. Light bounces off the hand, into the eye, signal to the brain, the brain produces an image. You aren't looking at your hand, you're seeing an imaginary representation of it.

@RMQualtrough not even light, brain and process are fundamental, they are them selves immagined/fabricated. You are creating this narrative.



 

Edited June 4, 2022 by _Archangel_

[Kksd74628]

@WokeBloke

What are you trying to achieve with your endless debates against basic spiritual experiences and principles? It's like going to football training without an intention to learn something, but by desiring to argue with the trainer that the football is flat and thinking that you will learn something new. Treat this forum like a school and you could understand something from other members. It's almost impossible to talk with you about any concept, because you don't accept the answer that's given.

Edited June 4, 2022 by Kksd74628

[WelcometoReality]

22 hours ago, WokeBloke said:

"Take your hand and hold it up to your face. Look at it. Your hand is imaginary." - Leo

Please defend this claim with a clear definition of the word imaginary. 

You see your hand and think that it is real or imaginary. 

Whether you think that the hand is real or imaginary the thinking is layered on top of your seeing of the hand.

[ZzzleepingBear]

46 minutes ago, WelcometoReality said:

You see your hand and think that it is real or imaginary. 

Whether you think that the hand is real or imaginary the thinking is layered on top of your seeing of the hand.

What about closing your eyes and move the hand over a flame?

If the argument is that the hand isn't real. That is true in a conceptional way. But the burning of the flesh will provide a painfully obvious conclution wheter you call it a hand or not.

The concept of hand could be gone, but you wouldn't want to stick your actual hand into the flame once again despite knowing that the hand is only imaginary.

[Someone here]

@WokeBloke

Life exists on many levels. Some are real, some are just an illusion, it depends on your perspective.

Take, for example, a stone. One the one level you can see, feel it, know its shape and its weight. It exists and it seems very solid and very real. But we all know that it's solid appearance is just an illusion. It is actually made of countless zillions of individual atoms, none of which are actually touching any other atom in the stone, they are merely tightly bonded with other nearby atoms. So it's solid appearance is really just an illusion. Further, those atoms are the smallest units of the substance that have the properties of the substance, but they are all actually made up of even smaller subatomic particles, none of which have the properties of the substance. So those atomic properties are just an illusion, from the perspective of a subatomic particle. But that subatomic particle is actually not a particle. It is just a tiny bundle of energy that exists on one level as a subatomic particle. Further, it is made up of even smaller units of very strange energy, having properties that don't always conform to the laws of normal physics that apply to it from the subatomic level and above. The subatomic particle is just an illusion from the perspective of the quantum world.

Take, as another example, taste. You can pick up an apple, take a bite and taste the apple. You identify the taste and it seems real. But your perception of the apple’s taste is just electrical signals from your tongue being interpreted by your brain. The electrical signals from your tongue were triggered by receptors on your tongue detecting certain chemical compounds in the apple, which your brain has learned are associated with the taste of an apple. Those chemical compounds are forms of matter, made up of subatomic particles, none of which actually have the property of flavor. On one level taste is real, but on another level it is just an illusion.

Sound? On one level at least, it is just an illusion. It is nothing more than vibrating particles of air, vibrating in waves of soundless energy that your ear drums detect and then your brain tells you is sound, but is all just taking place in your head.

Love? When we experience love, it certain feels very real and on one level it definitely is real, having very real impacts on our feelings, our decisions and our lives, but on another level it is just biochemical processes taking place within our brain. A trick of evolution that has evolved to help our species prosper. Thankfully, it still feels real and mostly feels good, whether it is actually a real thing or not.

There is almost nothing in life that cannot be seen as just an illusion on at least one level, real on another. Whether you see things as real or just an illusion is your personal choice - both answers are correct.

[WelcometoReality]

2 hours ago, ZzzleepingBear said:

What about closing your eyes and move the hand over a flame?

If the argument is that the hand isn't real. That is true in a conceptional way. But the burning of the flesh will provide a painfully obvious conclution wheter you call it a hand or not.

The concept of hand could be gone, but you wouldn't want to stick your actual hand into the flame once again despite knowing that the hand is only imaginary.

If your definition of real is that it hurts when you put it over a flame then yes it's real. 

In the levels of consciousness thread there was some people arguing that what was real was that which was unchanging meaning consciousness. And that appearances come and go and is therefore illusiory/imaginary.

 

 

 

 

[ZzzleepingBear]

1 hour ago, WelcometoReality said:

If your definition of real is that it hurts when you put it over a flame then yes it's real. 

In the levels of consciousness thread there was some people arguing that what was real was that which was unchanging meaning consciousness. And that appearances come and go and is therefore illusiory/imaginary.

 

 

 

 

Right.

You covered both aspects here to which I agree with. So I guess my arguing point is that the imaginary realization is heavily dependant on ones level of acceptance of any pain itself.

Totall ingnorance of pain, would make for a dysfunctional life from a bodily perspective. So there is where my critique of calling everything or anything illusory are besed on. We engage within the world despite it's illusory nature.

If we acknowledge that the world is fundamentally illusory, then what more wisdom could we derive at from repeting the already obvious nature of things. If we get badly wounded, we may accept the pain, so that we do not suffer from the infliction of pain itself. But we don't just call it imaginary and leave it at that, we act and treat the wound as if it was real.

[WokeBloke]

On 6/3/2022 at 2:22 PM, RMQualtrough said:

You're slipping away from reality bro.

Remember middle school science class. Light bounces off the hand, into the eye, signal to the brain, the brain produces an image. You aren't looking at your hand, you're seeing an imaginary representation of it.

There's no reason the representation must look the way that it does. I can confirm drug trip frog paws were still functional. A sober person beside me would ofc not see the frog paw hands I am.

How about the unobserved hand? Is that imaginary?

Why is your brain's rendering of the hand any less real than the unrendered hand?

Also what is your definition of imaginary?

Edited June 4, 2022 by WokeBloke

[WokeBloke]

22 hours ago, Breakingthewall said:

there is no essential difference between your hand or the air around it, or the emptiness of space. they are all made of the same substance, which is nothing. there is an apparent difference. a proton is a shape in nothing. your hand is a very complex shape in nothing. any form is creating itself. imagining is a good word. you and everything that exists are forms in nothing, so it can be said that everything is imaginary. they imagine themselves since whoever imagines is nothing. so your hand is imaginary, or your hand is nothing, or your hand is god

What is nothing in your view? You claim my hand is God which means it created everything. As far as I can tell my hand is a creation not a creator.

Edited June 4, 2022 by WokeBloke

[RMQualtrough]

6 minutes ago, WokeBloke said:

How about the unobserved hand? Is that imaginary?

Why is your brain's rendering of the hand any less real than the unrendered hand?

Also what is your definition of imaginary?

The word "imaginary" is confusing you. I don't actually know why Leo chooses the term. Instead of thinking "everything is imaginary", think "everything is immaterial in substance" and see if that is clearer...

There has never been and never will be any such thing as a substance.

Your mind-rendered hand and un-observed hand are made of the same thing: Nothing. They are made of nothing. Atoms are made of nothing. Thoughts are made of nothing. There isn't anything made of "stuff" fundamentally... That is what is being conveyed. You get that???

[RMQualtrough]

25 minutes ago, WokeBloke said:

What is nothing in your view? You claim my hand is God which means it created everything. As far as I can tell my hand is a creation not a creator.

God doesn't exist. There is nothingness, which is as you would expect, without limit, beginning, end, etc. It can't be created and it can't be destroyed, because it is nothing... Within it, there is limit, a consequence of its very own unlimited nature (meaning infinite potential, etc, as it naturally follows for several reasons), and this limit appears in the shape of forms.

Your hand is one of those. So am I. So is Leo. So are you. So is your emotion. So is your thought. So is the wall. So is your phone. ANY THING is a limited finite appearance taking place within it. Some "things" (important to note) are not perceived and hence never appear as form. As an example, I don't think anything perceives subatomic particles in a qualitative way. These are still things, manifestations of nothing. This is important because many people think nonduality means that when you can't perceive something it doesn't exist, which is false. Like if you put a kettle on boil and leave the room it would never boil. These are misconceptions. It's about what things ARE in substance.

The apparent thing ("consciousness") with which you observe everything is not a thing, but actual nothingness. Literal, pure, sheer, nothing. If you remove all objects of "your" awareness (for ease of understanding I phrase it that way), you the character cease to be.

Your hand is not God. Your hand is a form out of nothingness. It is made of nothing (substances do not exist). Pure nothingness = creation itself. It can't help but create within itself because it is without limit. It has no choice: Wanting to create or not is itself an appearance (thought, desire) made of nothing and hence already a manifestation of it.

Edited June 4, 2022 by RMQualtrough

[Danioover9000]

@WokeBloke

On 6/3/2022 at 1:00 PM, WokeBloke said:

"Take your hand and hold it up to your face. Look at it. Your hand is imaginary." - Leo

Please defend this claim with a clear definition of the word imaginary. 

 

 

 

   I can't, nor can he. It's almost pointless to define imagination, cuz then you'd still ask to define imagination .

   However, if I gave you my  example, of when I was mediating and in deep visualization, when I look at my hand, it's imaginary, relative to being inside my mental body. Of course, you'd still ask for further definitions still.

   P.S. It's cool to have hyper real visualization, and see how your hand goes through your other hand. One of my techniques to lucid dream.