I thought most of these issues were clear even without nondualism.
seeds wrote: ↑Mon Jan 08, 2018 5:43 pm
Your inner subjective experiences (your thoughts and dreams) most certainly do have a magical reality of their own. Would you like to argue that point with someone like Tolkien, for example?
I mean, how is it not magical when you can be immersed in a peaceful dream of an island paradise at one moment and then chased by phantasmagorical entities in the next?
1. Imagination is not a representation of the outside world. And no matter how wonderful it is, in the end it's "just" an experience in the head.
2. I read LOTR like 3 times when I was young. FYI, there are special cases of the human brain/mind, that can enhance someone's imagination way beyond what's "normal". Just to name two (and they may be related):
- The brain/mind has built-in filters, so you don't get overwhelmed by sheer amounts of data/experiences or unnecessary data/experiences etc. And some of these filters break down in some people, especially in various forms of schizophrenia.
- Some people can pretty much willfully access their subconscious, and have an access to unbelievable amounts and depths of data/experiences.
Those people who have some of this stuff, say milder versions, and don't go crazy, can sometimes experience or make up the most wonderful things and we can only be grateful to Tolkien that he was able to express his "inner world" in his works.
Your inner-experience is composed of an ability to control an infinitely malleable substance that is capable of being formed into absolutely anything you can imagine or desire. Now if you don't think that meets the definition of being a “special power,” then I don’t know what does.
1. It's not an infinite ability. Try to correctly imagine a 679 dimensional cube for example. Or try to imagine an infinitely big image. You can't.
Try to correctly imagine Graham's number. You can't, if you were able to, your head would collapse into a black hole.
etc.
I would go on and say we can't even imagine nondualism correctly, it's impossible.
2. It's not a different substance, just the inside of your head.
3. Ultimately we only have the illusion of free will, and the illusion that the "I" is controlling things. Imo by all means we should live our everyday lives like these things were real however, buying into such illusions, because why not.
Sorry to disappoint but you don't have a special power.
In what way are the three-dimensional features of your dreams a part of the world?
Dreams aren't representations of the outside world.
“Accurate” in comparison to what?
And what does accuracy have to do with anything being discussed here?
Sensory experiences are not always accurate representations of the outside world. (And sometimes things can go very seriously wrong.)
The guy I replied to seemed to take his sensory experiences at face value, he seemed to think they were accurate. That's actually a very dangerous state of mind to be in.
I suggest that our thoughts and dreams are indeed showing us exactly how things “really are,” in that, again, they are composed of a substance that is capable of becoming anything imaginable – just like the substance that forms the universe.
We are talking about a nebulous and informationally-based substance whose transformation from “noumena” into “phenomena” seems to be dependent upon the participation of consciousness (both inwardly and outwardly).
Well your suggestion is wrong. You also don't seem to understand what information is. Guess what, you will never find information independent of matter, because they are nondual. Matter and information are two conceptualizations of the same thing.
Does that mean that you are at least acknowledging the contrasting duality that exists between an “out there” and an “in there”?
Well again, your head isn't the only thing that exists in spacetime. The tree 10 meters in front of you is not the same thing as your head.
You are talking from the standpoint of your head, and from that point of view, the tree is outside in spacetime. The I and the self-awareness and the experiences of the head etc. are in the head, spacetime wise. The "I" as first-person view is universal however.
Sensory experiences are both part of the world and are representations of the world. So it's really hard to talk about a human mind without "inside" and "outside".
Dreams are indeed representations of the outside world – a bit skewed, unpredictable, and lower in resolution, but “representations” nonetheless.
Dreams aren't representations of the outside world. They are probably maintenance mechanisms of the brain/mind, just as sleep is a maintenance mechanism. If we don't sleep for a long time, we die. You may encounter prior sensory experiences in dreams, as they are being re-processed.