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The Illusion of Reality
The Illusion of Reality
While we may never be certain whether we ourselves exist in reality or are just programs a la Matrix, what we do see around is illusory..pls see below argument. What is more important is to recognize how absolutely powerful our mind is and I'll use the mind's capability to argue an aspect of 'reality' below.
When you look at yourself in the mirror, or touch your hand, pick up solid objects, walk on solid roads feeling your feet/footwear touch the ground...basically feel anything you touch. When you notice how solid some things are, don't you assume that you are actually touching a solid structure, that some things are really solid?
So, who is behind that assumption, and how powerful and capable that entity is (if that assumption is not necessarily true)? The entity causing you to assume these things is the mind. Did you know that no two objects actually ever touch each other...there is no contact happening between your foot and the ground, between your palm and the coke bottle you picked up? It's true. And now here's the killer: 99.99% of all solids is space! I guess we must have all heard about this but may not have dwelled too much into it. Just consider the implication of this...if 99.99% of most solids is space (liquids and gases will have even higher perc) then why do objects seem apparently solid and real? Because the mind is causing that illusion...and based on that illusion we experience life in the myriad ways that we do...see how powerful the mind is?
Here's a theory I've had since I was a child...actually not theory but a question. Are you and I seeing the same things? While reading the next few sentences pls bring to your active consciousness how powerful the mind is and then read them. Now, at the age of 3 yrs I learn that the color of the cap on the coke bottle is 'red'. Did I see it as 'red'? I don't know, but my mind has now labeled it as 'red'. And my mind is amazingly powerful and this bit of info is established thru certain physical connections in the neuro network. At the same time, say you were also with me in the same class, same age and listening to the teacher. You look at the Coke bottle top and see it as 'red' and label it in your mind as 'red'. Can I be sure I saw the color as red? Can you be sure you did so too? Of all you know I saw the color green, and let's say you saw the color purple. We might think that this should get resolved as life progresses and we will be able to label all colors the same way as the others because we assume that we are all seeing the same thing (color in this case). Please bring back to your active consciousness the awareness of how powerful your mind is...remember it makes you FEEL things as solid when you don't even touch it forget the fact that the object itself is essentially space. Now ask the question, how will I ever know/learn to see the specific 'red' that everyone else is purportedly seeing? My mind has wired it in that what I see as green is called red, and your mind has wired what you see as purple is called red. Now your entire experience of life is built upon that neuro network connection which grows its roots in ever deeper with more experiences of seeing 'red'.
Is there a way of experimenting this? I dunno but I'd expect the entity which undergoes the experiment to be able to do the following -
a. have simultaneous access to the minds of both you and me
b. view simultaneously the same thing (color) that you and I are seeing
c. interpret simultaneously what your mind is interpreting and what mine is
d. infer from these simultaneous things whether there is a difference between you and me
To suggest in concrete terms, it is like seeing with one eye what I am seeing and the other eye seeing what you are seeing and this robot which is using my eye as the left eye and your eye as its right eye, uses my mind to perceive its left eye vision and your mind to perceive its right eye vision. And has its own mind to be able to tell the difference between left eye and right eye, almost as if its mind is independent of the robot-system i,e, outside it!
We might argue we can do that now itself by testing me...feed my data into the computer, test you feed your data into the computer, and then study the results. Bring back to your active consciousness how powerful your mind is - when you are studying the results, you use your mind to interpret what you are studying! How will an individual ever be able to study independent of any mental wirings?
Now, although I will not argue this is so but I will state this only for you to consider - the ancients said all is Maya, that this is not real it is all illusion. Science is telling us they are absolutely right! Dunn sound much like woo now, does it?
In my next post I will try to look more closely at that 99.99% space thing and what is science theorizing about it. Anyway the other point is that our mind is so damn amazing (selling my TRIZ philosophy here...lol) that it is capable of arriving at an explanation or understanding of "reality" equally well by both intuitive meditative thought processes and methodical observational experimentation processes.
When you look at yourself in the mirror, or touch your hand, pick up solid objects, walk on solid roads feeling your feet/footwear touch the ground...basically feel anything you touch. When you notice how solid some things are, don't you assume that you are actually touching a solid structure, that some things are really solid?
So, who is behind that assumption, and how powerful and capable that entity is (if that assumption is not necessarily true)? The entity causing you to assume these things is the mind. Did you know that no two objects actually ever touch each other...there is no contact happening between your foot and the ground, between your palm and the coke bottle you picked up? It's true. And now here's the killer: 99.99% of all solids is space! I guess we must have all heard about this but may not have dwelled too much into it. Just consider the implication of this...if 99.99% of most solids is space (liquids and gases will have even higher perc) then why do objects seem apparently solid and real? Because the mind is causing that illusion...and based on that illusion we experience life in the myriad ways that we do...see how powerful the mind is?
Here's a theory I've had since I was a child...actually not theory but a question. Are you and I seeing the same things? While reading the next few sentences pls bring to your active consciousness how powerful the mind is and then read them. Now, at the age of 3 yrs I learn that the color of the cap on the coke bottle is 'red'. Did I see it as 'red'? I don't know, but my mind has now labeled it as 'red'. And my mind is amazingly powerful and this bit of info is established thru certain physical connections in the neuro network. At the same time, say you were also with me in the same class, same age and listening to the teacher. You look at the Coke bottle top and see it as 'red' and label it in your mind as 'red'. Can I be sure I saw the color as red? Can you be sure you did so too? Of all you know I saw the color green, and let's say you saw the color purple. We might think that this should get resolved as life progresses and we will be able to label all colors the same way as the others because we assume that we are all seeing the same thing (color in this case). Please bring back to your active consciousness the awareness of how powerful your mind is...remember it makes you FEEL things as solid when you don't even touch it forget the fact that the object itself is essentially space. Now ask the question, how will I ever know/learn to see the specific 'red' that everyone else is purportedly seeing? My mind has wired it in that what I see as green is called red, and your mind has wired what you see as purple is called red. Now your entire experience of life is built upon that neuro network connection which grows its roots in ever deeper with more experiences of seeing 'red'.
Is there a way of experimenting this? I dunno but I'd expect the entity which undergoes the experiment to be able to do the following -
a. have simultaneous access to the minds of both you and me
b. view simultaneously the same thing (color) that you and I are seeing
c. interpret simultaneously what your mind is interpreting and what mine is
d. infer from these simultaneous things whether there is a difference between you and me
To suggest in concrete terms, it is like seeing with one eye what I am seeing and the other eye seeing what you are seeing and this robot which is using my eye as the left eye and your eye as its right eye, uses my mind to perceive its left eye vision and your mind to perceive its right eye vision. And has its own mind to be able to tell the difference between left eye and right eye, almost as if its mind is independent of the robot-system i,e, outside it!
We might argue we can do that now itself by testing me...feed my data into the computer, test you feed your data into the computer, and then study the results. Bring back to your active consciousness how powerful your mind is - when you are studying the results, you use your mind to interpret what you are studying! How will an individual ever be able to study independent of any mental wirings?
Now, although I will not argue this is so but I will state this only for you to consider - the ancients said all is Maya, that this is not real it is all illusion. Science is telling us they are absolutely right! Dunn sound much like woo now, does it?
In my next post I will try to look more closely at that 99.99% space thing and what is science theorizing about it. Anyway the other point is that our mind is so damn amazing (selling my TRIZ philosophy here...lol) that it is capable of arriving at an explanation or understanding of "reality" equally well by both intuitive meditative thought processes and methodical observational experimentation processes.
Re: The Illusion of Reality
How do I interpret the lack of responses to this thread?
a. Lack of interest in the subject
b. Acceptance that Maya is for real...they got it right
c. Minds are allowing in more knowledge to understand what was wrongly termed 'woo'
d. Example of Crackpot-ness this thread is
I can rule out 'a' from the experience I have had here for more than 1.5 yrs. I can come close to ruling out 'd' again from the experience of more than 1.5 yrs because crackpot-ness never goes unchallenged. Most likely, it is b or c.
I will also state that my personality is such that you may not like the way I present myself. But pls try to look beyond it and give me the benefit of intelligence that you possess. So, in all sincerity I state that "What you think the universe is, is an illusion. All is illusion..all is Maya just like how the ancient Indians taught us some 10-20 millenia ago." Is there any reason to believe their teachings are wrong?
I have been starting a series of threads based primarily on scientific, logical arguments about what is and what is not 'woo'. As long as we can be respectful of each other and not rely on ridicule, I think all of us will learn a lot from these discussions. My objective is to establish that it is incorrect to claim we know what is, fully.
a. Lack of interest in the subject
b. Acceptance that Maya is for real...they got it right
c. Minds are allowing in more knowledge to understand what was wrongly termed 'woo'
d. Example of Crackpot-ness this thread is
I can rule out 'a' from the experience I have had here for more than 1.5 yrs. I can come close to ruling out 'd' again from the experience of more than 1.5 yrs because crackpot-ness never goes unchallenged. Most likely, it is b or c.
I will also state that my personality is such that you may not like the way I present myself. But pls try to look beyond it and give me the benefit of intelligence that you possess. So, in all sincerity I state that "What you think the universe is, is an illusion. All is illusion..all is Maya just like how the ancient Indians taught us some 10-20 millenia ago." Is there any reason to believe their teachings are wrong?
I have been starting a series of threads based primarily on scientific, logical arguments about what is and what is not 'woo'. As long as we can be respectful of each other and not rely on ridicule, I think all of us will learn a lot from these discussions. My objective is to establish that it is incorrect to claim we know what is, fully.
Re: The Illusion of Reality
You asked how you might interpret the lack of response. I can't speak for everyone else but I see it as too much, too soon. It's pretty clear to me that this topic might become a bit heated, just by nature of the topic itself. Besides, you put a lot of info into your first post and that requires some digestion for me.
Transformative fire...
Re: The Illusion of Reality
Fair one, Marian. however even if the topic does induce passionate arguments, unless there is decent enough rationality to back up the passion I guess the passion would be wasted in a debate on this topic. Anyway, will hope to see if there is really any great argument against Maya which I suspect is one of the best scientific descriptions for the nature of "reality".Marian wrote:You asked how you might interpret the lack of response. I can't speak for everyone else but I see it as too much, too soon. It's pretty clear to me that this topic might become a bit heated, just by nature of the topic itself. Besides, you put a lot of info into your first post and that requires some digestion for me.
Re: The Illusion of Reality
Apart from relying on actual science I assume?Nirvanam wrote:Anyway, will hope to see if there is really any great argument against Maya which I suspect is one of the best scientific descriptions for the nature of "reality".
Re: The Illusion of Reality
And what does your Actual science tell you, Paolo?Paolo wrote:Apart from relying on actual science I assume?Nirvanam wrote:Anyway, will hope to see if there is really any great argument against Maya which I suspect is one of the best scientific descriptions for the nature of "reality".
Re: The Illusion of Reality
What I see is a common misconception arising from an overly simple interpretation of reductionist principles. This actually suggests to me that the mind is lazy and jumps to inaccurate conclusions when it doesn't have sufficient information. The apparent solidity of objects is not due to the mind, but due to physical properties associated with objects, predominantly the energetic interactions between particles like electrons and protons. Factor in the behaviour of the energetic particles in that 99.99% of space and suddenly the solid becomes much more solid. For an example, consider a particle accelerator - it's 99.99999% vacuum but you wouldn't want to put your head in one, because there is a good chance you will be hit be a particle. As happened to Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski in 1978. What you are considering to be an empty space is actually an energy shell within which tiny, tiny, tiny electrons are moving very, very, very fast - so the space isn't solid, but neither is it empty and because of the highly energetic moving particles it behaves as if it were solid.Nirvanam wrote:Just consider the implication of this...if 99.99% of most solids is space (liquids and gases will have even higher perc) then why do objects seem apparently solid and real? Because the mind is causing that illusion...and based on that illusion we experience life in the myriad ways that we do...see how powerful the mind is?
There is a degree of variability in colour perception, for a variety of reasons. One person's red might be somewhat different to another person's red (particularly if they are colour blind). The issue can lie in the brain, but mostly it is in the physical structures in the eyes that detect light of different wavelengths. The simple fact is that most people have the same basic structure of eye, the same basic biochemical pigments that detect light the same pathways between the eyes and the brain and the same structures in the brain dedicated to interpreting the signal from the visual system. Some people have a different concentrations of colour sensitive cones than others, some people have damage to the physical structures involved in signalling or interpreting colour, but in most (if not all) cases the causes of different colour perception are due to fairly well understood phenomena.Nirvanam wrote:Here's a theory I've had since I was a child...actually not theory but a question. Are you and I seeing the same things? While reading the next few sentences pls bring to your active consciousness how powerful the mind is and then read them. Now, at the age of 3 yrs I learn that the color of the cap on the coke bottle is 'red'. Did I see it as 'red'? don't know, but my mind has now labeled it as 'red'.
It's worth remembering that colours are our simplified cultural method of naming different frequencies of light. Since light frequencies form a spectrum it is possible for a comparative map to be identified of how colour is perceived (usually this results in repetition of a frequency band in the spectrum when someone has a form of colourblindness). So I suggest that there is enough evidence to suggest that colour perception is fairly constrained within humans, with exceptions arising due to physical variations in visual architecture.
That said, I do acknowledge that it is difficult to test colour perception at the neural level, so we cannot be sure that we see colours in the same way, but given our understanding of how colour is misperceived due to physical causes, and given the structural consistency of the areas of the brain that interpret colour, it is not unreasonable to assume colour is perceived in mostly the same way by people who don't have damage to, or an unusual formation of, the regions of the brain that are involved. Of course, feel free to argue that because it can't be easily tested we can't be sure - but I'll stick to the conservative extrapolation from observation, rather than an exciting extrapolation from the imagination - it's less fun, but it's more likely to be true.
Re: The Illusion of Reality
Now, Paolo you have opened up the argument for the latest "woo" and if you hold this as the example for the space between the nucleus and electron, then you will also believe the Electric/Plasmic Universe theory.Paolo wrote:What I see is a common misconception arising from an overly simple interpretation of reductionist principles. This actually suggests to me that the mind is lazy and jumps to inaccurate conclusions when it doesn't have sufficient information. The apparent solidity of objects is not due to the mind, but due to physical properties associated with objects, predominantly the energetic interactions between particles like electrons and protons. Factor in the behaviour of the energetic particles in that 99.99% of space and suddenly the solid becomes much more solid. For an example, consider a particle accelerator - it's 99.99999% vacuum but you wouldn't want to put your head in one, because there is a good chance you will be hit be a particle. As happened to Anatoli Petrovich Bugorski in 1978. What you are considering to be an empty space is actually an energy shell within which tiny, tiny, tiny electrons are moving very, very, very fast - so the space isn't solid, but neither is it empty and because of the highly energetic moving particles it behaves as if it were solid.
Anyway, what you are saying is that the energy existing between nucleus and electron (whatever happened to quanta of energy that jump in different orbits) is basically not space...that what we think is space is actually filled with some matter?
There is a simpler explanation to your particle accelerator thing. The particle's speed is such that it would have made one lakh revolutions in the time you take to move your finger 2 cms.
And, here is the actual explanation for the solidity of items...all particles vibrate at an infinite speed. This vibration causes the illusion that there are more particles existing in the whole space of the pencil we are examining. Break down the speed of its vibration by a billion times, you can notice the same phenomenon on your ceiling fan - do you notice how certain circular objects when they rotate fast, you see them as not moving? If the fan has 3 blades and it is running high speed, you tend to see the three blades as not moving although you know it is moving. That is the illusion caused by speed of movement. Multiply that speed by a billion or so times, you get to the illusion caused by vibration of particles. This is the more simpler science explanation than reductionist principles and whatever other terminologies.
I dunno I doubt it...it may be true what you are saying. However, understanding the power of the mind I believe what I am seeing is not what you are seeing...well OK I don't believe it fully but I never let that possibility go. And I don't know how we can ever test it inspite of what any eye specialist tells me. The fact of the matter is that each one is inferring things based on his mind...so to assert that you and I are seeing the same thing, we must have faith in each other.Paolo wrote:There is a degree of variability in colour perception, for a variety of reasons. One person's red might be somewhat different to another person's red (particularly if they are colour blind). The issue can lie in the brain, but mostly it is in the physical structures in the eyes that detect light of different wavelengths. The simple fact is that most people have the same basic structure of eye, the same basic biochemical pigments that detect light the same pathways between the eyes and the brain and the same structures in the brain dedicated to interpreting the signal from the visual system. Some people have a different concentrations of colour sensitive cones than others, some people have damage to the physical structures involved in signalling or interpreting colour, but in most (if not all) cases the causes of different colour perception are due to fairly well understood phenomena.
It's worth remembering that colours are our simplified cultural method of naming different frequencies of light. Since light frequencies form a spectrum it is possible for a comparative map to be identified of how colour is perceived (usually this results in repetition of a frequency band in the spectrum when someone has a form of colourblindness). So I suggest that there is enough evidence to suggest that colour perception is fairly constrained within humans, with exceptions arising due to physical variations in visual architecture.
Anyway the specific example is not the item of interest...the item of interest is the possibility of the world we see.
[/quote]It's more likely to be true...LOL! life teaches us one thing for sure...we believe what we want to believe...neither of us knows the true universe. More likely to be true .. yep. Anyway, but still your Actual science still hasn't given any reason to believe all this is not Maya.Paolo wrote:That said, I do acknowledge that it is difficult to test colour perception at the neural level, so we cannot be sure that we see colours in the same way, but given our understanding of how colour is misperceived due to physical causes, and given the structural consistency of the areas of the brain that interpret colour, it is not unreasonable to assume colour is perceived in mostly the same way by people who don't have damage to, or an unusual formation of, the regions of the brain that are involved. Of course, feel free to argue that because it can't be easily tested we can't be sure - but I'll stick to the conservative extrapolation from observation, rather than an exciting extrapolation from the imagination - it's less fun, but it's more likely to be true.
Edit: infinite speed is not accurate...let's just say very high speed...speeds that humans are not even close to duplicating
Re: The Illusion of Reality
So, Maya, seems a very good explanation of the "reality" we purportedly experience.
Or do we still cling on to the faith we have put in who, how, and where the understanding of reality comes from?
Or do we still cling on to the faith we have put in who, how, and where the understanding of reality comes from?