Please, I need help from patient and committed idealists

[AshvinP]

I admire the quality of the commentary here.

The original post raises the fundamental question of who (or what) one is. Another way to approach that question, in addition to the commentary above, is to remove what one is not, and what remains is what one is.

Each of us have many identity elements. My identity is a very privileged white USA male. My family, wife, friends, dog, community, beliefs, thoughts, history, health, wealth, home, property, politics, religion, nation, competencies, faults, failures, friends, enemies, digital expressions, and education are all part my identity library. The full list is exhaustively longer. I also identify with my body, contained in a membrane of skin.

When all those "me" identities are dissolved, what remains is what I am. By the way, when Moses asked God's name, he answered "I AM." (Exodus 3:14)

Well said, TG. What I am is what We are, the Spirit who surges through One and All.

[lorenzop]

In my humble opinion the best and simplist approach is to be opposed to any possibility of life after death, and take advantage of the opportunity you have right now.
Clarity of mind, clarity in seeing, touching, tasting, hearing and smelling . . . this will get you places in either Materialist or Idealist POV. Don't assume or count on second chances.

[Eugene I]

In my humble opinion the best and simplist approach is to be opposed to any possibility of life after death, and take advantage of the opportunity you have right now.
Clarity of mind, clarity in seeing, touching, tasting, hearing and smelling . . . this will get you places in either Materialist or Idealist POV. Don't assume or count on second chances.

In my humble opinion the best and simplest approach is to be opened to any possibility, including the possibility of life after death, and do not limit ourselves to reductionist or mind-limiting paradigms. Our views shape and often limit our life and our development. By choosing mind-limiting paradigms we limit our developmental possibilities. Some people convince themselves that love does not exist (because it is a way people manipulate other people, or it is just an evolutionary survival mechanism, or whatever) and then never get to experience love in their life. Other people convince themselves that spirituality is a pseudo-religious fantasy and, as a consequence, limit the horizon of their consciousness, do not develop their spiritual abilities and never experience the life of the spirit.

[Lysander]

Alan Watts is a good way into intuiting nondualism. I recommend The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are as a good place to start. You can find an audiobook copy here, and you can find his lectures all over YouTube.

Hello from Portugal again. I have read Allan Watts, The Book: On The Taboo... and Bernardo's Brief Peeks Beyond.

There's a point I can't understand and I'll thank someone for their patience to explain it to me, as if I were 10 years old, "The body is in consciousness, not counscioness in the body.". The whirlpool metaphor was not of great use either, is there any other way to explain this matter?

Please and Thank You for your kindness.

Maybe a 10-year old would like the dream metaphor, which is imperfect but still compelling.

When you have a dream, the dreamed body is in consciousness not consciousness in the dreamed body. Perhaps your awake body too is in consciousness. Kids like to ask: How do you know you are not dreaming? Waking life is qualitatively the same experience as a dream except it is consistent, shared and predictable. These three objections are all tackled in Idea of the World. We could imagine a consistent dream, after all, we will die, so life is perhaps just an extended very long dream. Shared dreams also exist in a minority of Dissociative Identity Disorder patients, where each alter experiences the same dream from different perspectives, as BK never hesitates to mention. So this waking world is not qualitatively different than a very long DID shared dream in that regard. Another objection is the waking world is predictable whereas a dream is random, hectic and nonsensical. But not every dream must have these qualities. Some dreams are normal (think of an erotic dream, or riding a roller coaster) and don't have anxiety-induced distortions, like moving in slow-motion or your teeth falling out. So this waking world is experientially, qualitatively indistinguishable from a long shared DID non-fever dream. That sounds like a stretch but it is some food for thought if we think about how you would disprove the dream from inside it. You could also have microscopes inside a dream and visit forums and pray to God. So what makes the difference to our normal thinking is a combination of intuitive factors, like "felt concreteness", rather than philosophical argument. Of course, the philosophical argument won't say waking life is exactly a dream but is made of mind rather than physical.

[Toto Gale]

When you have a dream, the dreamed body is in consciousness not consciousness in the dreamed body. Perhaps your awake body too is in consciousness. Kids like to ask: How do you know you are not dreaming? Waking life is qualitatively the same experience as a dream except it is consistent, shared and predictable. These three objections are all tackled in Idea of the World. We could imagine a consistent dream, after all, we will die, so life is perhaps just an extended very long dream. Shared dreams also exist in a minority of Dissociative Identity Disorder patients, where each alter experiences the same dream from different perspectives, as BK never hesitates to mention. So this waking world is not qualitatively different than a very long DID shared dream in that regard. Another objection is the waking world is predictable whereas a dream is random, hectic and nonsensical. But not every dream must have these qualities. Some dreams are normal (think of an erotic dream, or riding a roller coaster) and don't have anxiety-induced distortions, like moving in slow-motion or your teeth falling out. So this waking world is experientially, qualitatively indistinguishable from a long shared DID non-fever dream. That sounds like a stretch but it is some food for thought if we think about how you would disprove the dream from inside it. You could also have microscopes inside a dream and visit forums and pray to God. So what makes the difference to our normal thinking is a combination of intuitive factors, like "felt concreteness", rather than philosophical argument. Of course, the philosophical argument won't say waking life is exactly a dream but is made of mind rather than physical.

Thanks for sharing that description. I would add the concept of dreams within dreams, e.g. mind-at-large dreaming of a vast number of alters (a DID); those alters dreaming that they are human; those humans having dreams; and those dreams containing dreams. In computer science, a function that calls itself is known as recursion.

[AshvinP]

Alan Watts is a good way into intuiting nondualism. I recommend The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are as a good place to start. You can find an audiobook copy here, and you can find his lectures all over YouTube.

Hello from Portugal again. I have read Allan Watts, The Book: On The Taboo... and Bernardo's Brief Peeks Beyond.

There's a point I can't understand and I'll thank someone for their patience to explain it to me, as if I were 10 years old, "The body is in consciousness, not counscioness in the body.". The whirlpool metaphor was not of great use either, is there any other way to explain this matter?

Please and Thank You for your kindness.

Maybe a 10-year old would like the dream metaphor, which is imperfect but still compelling.

When you have a dream, the dreamed body is in consciousness not consciousness in the dreamed body. Perhaps your awake body too is in consciousness. Kids like to ask: How do you know you are not dreaming? Waking life is qualitatively the same experience as a dream except it is consistent, shared and predictable. These three objections are all tackled in Idea of the World. We could imagine a consistent dream, after all, we will die, so life is perhaps just an extended very long dream. Shared dreams also exist in a minority of Dissociative Identity Disorder patients, where each alter experiences the same dream from different perspectives, as BK never hesitates to mention. So this waking world is not qualitatively different than a very long DID shared dream in that regard. Another objection is the waking world is predictable whereas a dream is random, hectic and nonsensical. But not every dream must have these qualities. Some dreams are normal (think of an erotic dream, or riding a roller coaster) and don't have anxiety-induced distortions, like moving in slow-motion or your teeth falling out. So this waking world is experientially, qualitatively indistinguishable from a long shared DID non-fever dream. That sounds like a stretch but it is some food for thought if we think about how you would disprove the dream from inside it. You could also have microscopes inside a dream and visit forums and pray to God. So what makes the difference to our normal thinking is a combination of intuitive factors, like "felt concreteness", rather than philosophical argument. Of course, the philosophical argument won't say waking life is exactly a dream but is made of mind rather than physical.

We should be very careful with the dream metaphor, bc it gives the impression that the "alter life" is just a personal fantasy with no connection to shared transpersonal Reality. But that is not even true of our dreams in "alter mode" - i think Jung, among a few others, pretty conclusively demonstrated that dreams consist in shared symbols of the collective unconscious, although we do not notice that transpersonal aspect until we have developed our waking consciousness significantly.

[Lysander]

We should be very careful with the dream metaphor, bc it gives the impression that the "alter life" is just a personal fantasy with no connection to shared transpersonal Reality. But that is not even true of our dreams in "alter mode" - i think Jung, among a few others, pretty conclusively demonstrated that dreams consist in shared symbols of the collective unconscious, although we do not notice that transpersonal aspect until we have developed our waking consciousness significantly.

Yes, that's a very good point. Idealism suffers from this spirit of solipsism - where the shared public world is ostensibly collapsed into the supposed private interior world - compared to mainstream common sense dualism. This is one obstacle I encounter when speaking to people about it in daily life. It's not practical to do what BK does and describe "how actually materialism is the real solipsistic philosophy" because that entails discussing even more abstract background knowledge. So it's a relevant question about how to introduce nonduality or idealism in a casually correct and persuasive way.

Have you succeeded in conveying idealism to non-philosophers in daily life? What angle do you take?

[AshvinP]

We should be very careful with the dream metaphor, bc it gives the impression that the "alter life" is just a personal fantasy with no connection to shared transpersonal Reality. But that is not even true of our dreams in "alter mode" - i think Jung, among a few others, pretty conclusively demonstrated that dreams consist in shared symbols of the collective unconscious, although we do not notice that transpersonal aspect until we have developed our waking consciousness significantly.

Yes, that's a very good point. Idealism suffers from this spirit of solipsism - where the shared public world is ostensibly collapsed into the supposed private interior world - compared to mainstream common sense dualism. This is one obstacle I encounter when speaking to people about it in daily life. It's not practical to do what BK does and describe "how actually materialism is the real solipsistic philosophy" because that entails discussing even more abstract background knowledge. So it's a relevant question about how to introduce nonduality or idealism in a casually correct and persuasive way.

Have you succeeded in conveying idealism to non-philosophers in daily life? What angle do you take?

No, but I have not really attempted either. I do all of my discussion about it online. Most people are simply not interested in philosophy because they see no practical connection to their lives. That's one reason why my angle would be the same as it is on here - phenomenology. We should start from 1st person experience. I actually don't think any rigorous and consistent philosophy or science can be done without that starting point. We could call it "methodological solipsism". It seems to me "solipsism" carries a lot of baggage that it does not need to carry. You referenced a critique in another thread, which I thought was made by Russell (but maybe someone else made it before), where he says no one acts as if solipsism is true - people must act in a way that rejects solipsism to function in the world.

Initially I thought that was a pretty solid critique, but the more I think about it, I am not so sure. For ex., a solipsist can say other conscious beings represent unconscious aspects of themselves which present in an external way, and should be interacted with, including with acts of service, mercy, love, etc., to attain more full consciousness of themselves and bring all aspects of their Be-ing into alignment. I actually don't think that is very far from the true nature of what is occurring, although there are much more meaningful/helpful ways of expressing it, with higher resolution, such as those we find in ancient mythology. It's a fascinating topic to explore.

[Eugene I]

I think the key assumption of the generic solipsism is that "my own" conscious experiences are the only existing conscious experiences, and other living beings are only my own "dream characters" that have none of their own subjective conscious experiences. Ashvin, you have a valid point of still treating such dream characters with care as if they represent subconscious aspects of "my own" psyche. Still, this view is significantly different from the multi-personal idealism which assumes that the beings we perceive and interact with have their own 1-st person subjective experiences.

[AshvinP]

I think the key assumption of the generic solipsism is that "my own" conscious experiences are the only existing conscious experiences, and other living beings are only my own "dream characters" that have none of their own subjective conscious experiences. Ashvin, you have a valid point of still treating such dream characters with care as if they represent subconscious aspects of "my own" psyche. Still, this view is significantly different from the multi-personal idealism which assumes that the beings we perceive and interact with have their own 1-st person subjective experiences.

Yes, I think careful consideration of our 1st person experience naturally leads us to the conclusion that other 1st-person perspectives exist, and are always interacting with our own perspective, giving rise to willing-feeling-thinking within our perspective. They can still all be 1st person perspectives of the One essential Mind, though. Is that still "solipsism" or something else?