Proof of an external world?

[r0ckyreed]

5 hours ago, Razard86 said:

.have you ever experienced anything OUTSIDE of you?

No. I haven't.  And I admit this.  But I cannot assume that my subjective experience is all there is. Nor can I assume that there is an objective reality.

My experiences tell me that only my subjective experience exists because I have never experienced any experience but my own.  But my logic/inference suggests to me that there is more to reality than my subjective experience.  Each creature I see appears to have a consciousness of its own.  There are many humans and creatures that know way more than I do.  I am still trying to figure all of this out because both my perceptions and logic can delude me. So how can I trust any of my faculties to derive the truth?  It seems like logic is a better lead because at least it can question the truth-value of my experience, whereas sight and sound are just appearances without question. The main issue is what kind of logic and how do I know whether my logic is valid or not. So I don't immediately get out of this conundrum.  That is one reason why I love contemplation because I can use my intellect to question existence. What I really mean by logic is the use of the intellect to contemplate.  I don't mean following narrow rules, which is a big limit I see with logic.

5 hours ago, Razard86 said:

What you do is say the body is ME, so anything NOT the body is OUTSIDE of me

I don't think I am just the body.  I am the perceptual field of experience.  I am all the sights, sounds, tastes, feelings, smells, and thoughts.  I am The Field.  What I mean by external is there being things outside of The Field like the sun, galaxy, ozone layer, etc. because those things are ideas within my Field, but they are not in actuality within my Field at this time.  I believe that I can go to The Golden Gate Bridge, but right now, it is a belief in my Field.  My whole question is that just because the Golden Gate Bridge is not inside my Field, does that mean that it ceases to exist?  If so, then why do I hear about it indirectly through news, etc.  It seems to imply that I can experience it directly out there somewhere in my Infinite Field of Consciousness.  

I think Consciousness still holds things in existence even though I cannot perceive them.

Take the video game of Skyrim or GTA V for example.  The game holds all of the locations in it, but you are only aware of your current one. You can think of The Screen as being what holds everything but is only aware of what is there.  The Screen or Field of Consciousness is holding things that are outside of my current awareness of them.  At least, that is how I imagine that to be.  I apply that same analogy to the world that what if my Field or Consciousness is holding things in existence that are beyond my awareness of them.  I think this makes sense given that space is infinite.  And space is nothing more but the emptiness within my field that makes room for all objects to exist.  If you can agree that space is infinite, then that implies that there can be objects in that space whether they are currently perceived in my Field or not.  Can't you conceive of this? If so, then it is possible that objects can still exist outside of your Field while being rendered or held within your Field.  We only perceive only a small fraction of The Field when compared to the Infinite Field of Consciousness.  It makes me wonder why experience is designed like it is?  Why is my sight only limited to this oval in front of me and why can't I see 360 degrees all around me.  My auditory field can hear 360 degrees, so why is my sight limited to what is in front of me? Etc. Etc.  We say that sight is our primary or dominant sense, but yet, our sight seems more limited than our sense of sound.

Thanks for your response!  I am still trying my best to understand given my ignorance.

All the best,

Rocky  

[r0ckyreed]

5 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

@r0ckyreed Keep playing these games and you will never wake up.

Sorry for my ignorance.  I am trying to understand and trying to deconstruct my games and BS.  It is hard for me to see my own blindspots.  And I don't outsource this to anyone else, as it is nobody else's job but my own to spot.

However, the main reason why I propose the question here on the Forum is so that I can gain more awareness of my blindspots so I can grow and gain a deeper understanding and become wiser.  I am just ignorant to the games that I am playing right now, and I am not sure what games you mean.  I am open to challenging myself and the games that I am playing.  It is hard to do that though when I don't know.  It is hard for me to understand, so I apologize for my ignorance.  I am openminded, curious, and have a genuine desire for truth.  I just want to understand the truth and not believe in it, which is a trap that I noticed myself fall into in the past. So that was a game that I was playing for sure.  In my current situation, I only have access to contemplation and meditation as tools for gaining insight and understanding.

I guess I do not fully understand really what is meant by no external world because there appears to be more than my subjective experience, but I know that from my point of view, my subjective experience is the only thing I know and can say exists even though there appears to be more to it.

Thank you for your time and insight.

All the best,

Rocky  

[r0ckyreed]

5 hours ago, Osaid said:

What does it mean for something to exist? How do you know something doesn't exist?

Perceptions and ideas or otherwise, consciousness.

Ohhh!!! I think I may be getting it now!  My subjective experience or consciousness is all there is to what I call reality.  I can imagine things outside but they are inside.  But my consciousness is mentally constructing everything around me that I am not aware of.  So what I call the external world is actually just 1. Consciousness and 2. a mental construction.  If my mind is constructing all of the physics and laws without my awareness, then my mind is constructing the external world without my awareness.  The external world now is redefined as my own mind!!  Because even though I am not aware of what my mind constructs, it/I still constructed it nonetheless.  So things existing beyond my awareness is not the external world, it is the nature of Consciousness or my own mind or Field.  Let me think about this a bit more to try to make it clear in my mind.  I kinda realized that what I call the external world is not what I was meaning by it anymore.  Everything around me is inside of this Field, which feels like a mind or brain.  Where I think the external world is, I am only left with my mind or Field.  It is the feeling of being inside of a mind or brain that I recognize to be my own.  Let me contemplate this more to see if this is full of crap or not.  I have to directly grok it.

Edited November 27, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[Razard86]

1 hour ago, r0ckyreed said:

No. I haven't.  And I admit this.  But I cannot assume that my subjective experience is all there is. Nor can I assume that there is an objective reality.

 

You already know the truth....you are just ignoring it to stay asleep. So here is my question for you....have you ever met an other who has had anything BUT subjective experience. If this is the case....then how can you say you cannot assume that subjective experience is all there is....when your entire life has been only subjective experience.

Even saying "I cannot assume" is done WITHIN subjective direct experience. Do you not realize that all knowledge you have ever had is from direct experience. Everything= Direct Experience. So notice....you are doubting...using direct experience...to do it, and you are doubting that which gives you the ability to doubt.

Do you recognize what is going on here? I can give you a million pointers...an infinite amount of pointers. I have read your posts you are very intelligent. So all you are doing is turning your intelligence against yourself because you are afraid to be alone. You don't like that. But what you don't realize is that even finding out everything is you...doesn't destroy the concept of "other." If anything it enhances it!! Because it allows you the space to accept an other as you, and stop judging it. It also awakens you to the fact that ANY judgment against an other...is really a judgment against YOU because they are YOU.

So it supercharges your growth!! The moment you feel any resistance to anyone or anything, you get to find out....what judgment lies beneath. But this silly little game...of how do I know blah blah blah, all knowledge comes from direct experience...this WILL NEVER CHANGE. This is the stopping point, why? Because direct experience is ALL THAT IS AND WILL EVER BE!!! This has never been disproven and IT NEVER WILL.

You think science hasn't tried? They have tried and all they have succeeded in doing is proving over and over that reality is a dream. They fail miserably in their attempts. Every single time. 

[A Fellow Lighter]

@r0ckyreed

The process is mind. The cause is caring. When you care to be aware of sth, or experience sth, it manifests in your consciousness. 

[r0ckyreed]

@Razard86 Wow. That was powerful. You are right. I am overthinking it. My mind is tricking me into another deception. Now I kind of understand why Buddhists say “thinking is dangerous.” The external world and the Amazon package are thoughts in my mind. No more real than past and future. To even think an external world exists is to be lost in the illusion of time. Now, I can see that. 

Thanks for your intelligence!  

Edited November 27, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[Razard86]

5 minutes ago, A Fellow Lighter said:

@r0ckyreed

The process is mind. The cause is caring. When you care to be aware of sth, or experience sth, it manifests in your consciousness. 

You got it.

[Razard86]

3 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

@Razard86 Wow. That was powerful. You are right. I am overthinking it. My mind is tricking me into another deception. Now I kind of understand why Buddhists say “thinking is dangerous.” The external world and the Amazon package are thoughts in my mind. No more real than past and future. To even think an external world exists is to be lost in the illusion of time. Now, I can see that. 

Thanks for your intelligence!  

^I am just a thought in your mind....reminding you of what you are. I love you, because you are me!!! Don't worry about the concept of other....they are still experienced as other....its just seen from a different lenses but notice the beauty that the other...is YOU. If you give the space of an "other" as actually you...you will "SEE YOURSELF IN OTHERS." Its beautiful when it happens!

So you are me, so why wouldn't I be on your side? Why wouldn't I want you to experience joy, and realize that everything is okay because you are always surrounded by yourself!! At all times!! The beauty is in that constant recognition, we suffer when we forget that we are always surrounded by ourselves!! 

[Osaid]

7 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

Ohhh!!! I think I may be getting it now!  My subjective experience or consciousness is all there is to what I call reality.  I can imagine things outside but they are inside.  But my consciousness is mentally constructing everything around me that I am not aware of.  So what I call the external world is actually just 1. Consciousness and 2. a mental construction.  If my mind is constructing all of the physics and laws without my awareness, then my mind is constructing the external world without my awareness.  The external world now is redefined as my own mind!!  Because even though I am not aware of what my mind constructs, it/I still constructed it nonetheless.  So things existing beyond my awareness is not the external world, it is the nature of Consciousness or my own mind or Field.  Let me think about this a bit more to try to make it clear in my mind.  I kinda realized that what I call the external world is not what I was meaning by it anymore.  Everything around me is inside of this Field, which feels like a mind or brain.  Where I think the external world is, I am only left with my mind or Field.  It is the feeling of being inside of a mind or brain that I recognize to be my own.  Let me contemplate this more to see if this is full of crap or not.  I have to directly grok it.

How are you aware that there are things which exist beyond your awareness?

[r0ckyreed]

6 hours ago, Osaid said:

How are you aware that there are things which exist beyond your awareness?

It is implicit understanding.  I have an implicit understanding that space is infinite even though I cannot explicate or prove it or even directly verify it.

Even though my experience feels finite (because I can only see so far) it is actually infinite partly because the space around me has no beginning or end.

[Osaid]

35 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

It is implicit understanding.  I have an implicit understanding that space is infinite even though I cannot explicate or prove it or even directly verify it.

Right, so your perception of "things outside of existence" is currently reduced to something implicit rather than explicit, until it becomes explicit again, perhaps through direct experience. Although, once it becomes explicit through direct experience, it wouldn't be "outside of existence" anymore. So, "things outside of existence" is always inherently implicit.

How does something exist implicitly? What is your direct experience of something that is implicit?

 

Edited November 28, 2022 by Osaid

[Leo Gura]

15 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

But I cannot assume that my subjective experience is all there is.

That's NOT an assumption.

That's literally absolutely true.

Check.

[Leo Gura]

15 hours ago, r0ckyreed said:

Sorry for my ignorance.  I am trying to understand and trying to deconstruct my games and BS.  It is hard for me to see my own blindspots.  And I don't outsource this to anyone else, as it is nobody else's job but my own to spot.

However, the main reason why I propose the question here on the Forum is so that I can gain more awareness of my blindspots so I can grow and gain a deeper understanding and become wiser.  I am just ignorant to the games that I am playing right now, and I am not sure what games you mean.  I am open to challenging myself and the games that I am playing.  It is hard to do that though when I don't know.  It is hard for me to understand, so I apologize for my ignorance.  I am openminded, curious, and have a genuine desire for truth.  I just want to understand the truth and not believe in it, which is a trap that I noticed myself fall into in the past. So that was a game that I was playing for sure.  In my current situation, I only have access to contemplation and meditation as tools for gaining insight and understanding.

I guess I do not fully understand really what is meant by no external world because there appears to be more than my subjective experience, but I know that from my point of view, my subjective experience is the only thing I know and can say exists even though there appears to be more to it.

Thank you for your time and insight.

All the best,

Rocky  

You are dreaming.

That's all there is to reality.

And there is nothing outside this dream because "outsideness" is itself part of the dream.

For a thing to exist is for it to be dreamt. Nothing exists but dreams.

Edited November 28, 2022 by Leo Gura

[YogiCosmos]

There’s a key element missing here… Your relation to the world. The world isn’t apart from you. But let’s take this one step at a time.

The scriptures use the example of a snake and a rope.

The illusion is that the rope is a snake. But the snake isn’t there… it’s always been the rope. The snake exists in the mind. The key is to transcend the mind and experience the rope.
 

Actually, you are the rope and always have been. Now transcend the mind and be the rope. Not understand conceptually like a math equation… but BE. You cannot realize and liberate through logic. The ego has to lose its grip and realize it IS this external world you’re talking about.

The snake is the dream. It’s not external to the rope. It IS the rope. But only in the mind.

The famous Shankara verse:

“The world is unreal
Only Brahman is real
The world is Brahman”

…The snake is unreal
Only the rope is real
The snake is the rope…

Edited November 28, 2022 by YogiCosmos

[r0ckyreed]

12 hours ago, Osaid said:

How does something exist implicitly? What is your direct experience of something that is implicit?

Good question.  I am not sure.  By definition, the implicit is indirect and intuitive in nature.  I can't experience the infinitude of space directly, but I can grok it implicitly and indirectly.  I think it is kind of like the unconscious mind.  The external world can be called "the unconscious mind."  I see no difference between the hair growing on my skin and the growth of plants in my garden.  It is all the same process to me.  It is like a gigantic unconscious mind that runs the entire universe.

12 hours ago, Leo Gura said:

That's NOT an assumption.

That's literally absolutely true.

Check.

I checked it.  I have only ever experienced my subjective experience.  If my subjective experience though is sovereign and all I have, then couldn't you and others also have sovereign experiences like my own? I know that I am inferring the existence of other minds of my own.  But if my subjective experience is like it is, then is it possible for their to be other subjective experiences where I become the object in someone else's awareness?  Right now, I know that the closest thing I have of experiencing others is objects (i.e., human bodies) within my consciousness, which I assume have a subjective experience like mine behind their eyes.  

Could it be kind of like a first-person multiplayer online game vs. a single-player first-person?  In the multiplayer option, it assumes the existence of "external world" where there are other Playstation consoles (or other minds) connected to the online database (or Infinite Mind).  My current console (i.e., mind) cannot perceive the others because they are all sovereign.  Or is it more like playing a single-player first-person open-world game like Skyrim, where everything on the screen is me and there are no other players but me?  Is that the latter pointer you are talking about?  It seems like it to me.  But that would mean that my subjective experience is all there is and you all are basically different aspects of my subjective experience. Wow!  But I am not aware of everything, so maybe it is more like what I call the "external world" or "universe" is really my unconscious mind.  It makes me wonder whether there is even such a thing as an "unconscious universal mind" because if I am not conscious of it, it is just an inference at best.  

Come to think of it more, I assume that behind the eyes of humans, there is a consciousness like my own that I have never validated directly.  Come to think of it now, it doesn't make sense because that would assume that subjective experience is rendered from an object like the brain.  But if you look into someone's brain, you never find a subject or consciousness in there (including if I examined my own brain).  My own brain would be nothing more than an object within consciousness.  So if other consciousnesses exist, they would have to be constructed by my subjective experience like I do in Skyrim or in my dreams.  Am I on the right track?  It feels like it to me.

Edited November 28, 2022 by r0ckyreed

[Razard86]

11 minutes ago, r0ckyreed said:

Good question.  I am not sure.  By definition, the implicit is indirect and intuitive in nature.  I can't experience the infinitude of space directly, but I can grok it implicitly and indirectly.  I think it is kind of like the unconscious mind.  The external world can be called "the unconscious mind."  I see no difference between the hair growing on my skin and the growth of plants in my garden.  It is all the same process to me.  It is like a gigantic unconscious mind that runs the entire universe.

I checked it.  I have only ever experienced my subjective experience.  If my subjective experience though is sovereign and all I have, then couldn't you and others also have sovereign experiences like my own?  Kind of like a first-person multiplayer online game vs. a single-player first-person?  In the multiplayer option, it assumes the existence of "external world" where there are other Playstation consoles (or other minds) connected to the online database (or Infinite Mind).  My current console (i.e., mind) cannot perceive the others because they are all sovereign.  Or is it more like playing a single-player first-person open-world game like Skyrim, where everything on the screen is me and there are no other players but me?  Is that the latter pointer you are talking about?  It seems like it to me.  But that would mean that my subjective experience is all there is and you all are basically different aspects of my subjective experience. Wow!  But I am not aware of everything, so maybe it is more like what I call the "external world" or "universe" is really my unconscious mind.  It makes me wonder whether there is even such a thing as an "unconscious universal mind" because if I am not conscious of it, it is just an inference at best.  But if I am conscious of the unconscious, then it is no longer unconscious.  Sorry if this appears to sound like word farting.  I am trying to articulate this without contradicting myself. It's hard!

The dream model works really well. Picture this....you are dreaming....but you ZOOMED INTO rockyreed.....you could also ZOOM out from that perspective and realize.....you are dreaming the entire universe. You can also realize that inside your POV.....whatever is outside your POV....doesn't exist. You could also realize that your ability to create reality...is instantaneous!! Its faster than light, try blinking for example really fast. Notice how it disappears and is there again. 

When VR Technology reaches a certain point....humans won't even be able to play this silly little game they are currently playing at the moment lol.

[Razard86]

Here is a good video that can help you understand a little better. 

 

[Loveeee]

You are your experience

For something to be outside of you, you would have to be finite, limited, bound

Do you experience any "boundary" ? No ? Of course not, what does it even mean. So, your experience is boundless, you are boundless

 

[Leo Gura]

On 11/28/2022 at 10:11 AM, r0ckyreed said:

then couldn't you and others also have sovereign experiences like my own?

How could you ever know? Since as soon as you know it, it's your experience.

There's no way out of yourself.

Edited November 30, 2022 by Leo Gura

[OBEler]

@Leo Gura so the answer to this is not knowing? 

Like Peter Ralston would say