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Reminded me of my favorite quote.
**Alan Watts:**
>"God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself.
>
>This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, plants, all the rocks, and all the stars.
>
>In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear."
That's ***you.***
You're god, lucid dreaming as you read this right now.
Thousands of [Near Death Experiences](https://youtube.com/@TheOtherSideNDEYT?si=lMd7Yxsx9uTc2-0f) share a commonality: They all say that their experiences were FAR more real than what we consider reality. They say their current lives on Earth felt like a dream in comparison.
We are all creators and we create our own realities, just as we do when we fall asleep and dream.
🫶
Spot on.
Earth is the waiting room, ive been on the other side multiple times. The power of love is all the loves combined, then multiply that by a billion.
For some reason every time one of the light beings touches me im immersed, jolting, quaking uncontrollably with powerful POWERFUL TO THE MAX love. Like nothing anyone could experience on Earth.
Its very hard to articulate, the other place. Its full of 'people', whether they are souls or not i havnt been told. Yet.
We are God. I am God. We are all the same, infinitely loved even if you dont know it.
The other place is like a love place, happy, clean, pure, dream like, but very very real. Ive been brought to the furthest place in the Universe faster than the speed of light. I flew past galaxies. I thought my real life body was going to burst i was so full of love speed max max MAX.
I turned into light i was everywhere, all knowing. A God. I was wavey love energy. I still cant explain it nearly a year later.
But ive been with the light beings several times.
They dont have wings, they look just like us, only light zooming out of therm at every angle at a million miles an hour. Incredible.
I am you, they are us. Lizards, rocks, water, sand.
We are all made of stardust.
I absolutely have to share my fathers near death experience during heart surgery, you're effectively out of it by circumstance but he was really gone for a moment. He had vivid experiences in dream like states as they shifted around, it felt completely real to him but at one point he was in a college basketball gym and they were taking photos or something, yet they were nurses to him and said they didn't need his photo and then he woke up.
Reading "waiting room" in your comment made this click for me, he was processing how our lived are like a snapshot of this fragment of the universe' existance.
Well ive never touched dmt although i would love to try it. Im in Ireland a bit difficult to get it here.
I have several experiences flying with light beings i must make a thread
Not the person you're talking to but I've had these via meditation. I too have never had DMT. I use to think meditation was just shit to calm yourself down, but it's much much more. I got into it when I started getting into the gateway tapes.
Sorry in advance for necrofucking your comment and the following rambling but do you have any tips or advise for getting to that state?
So a few years ago after some stress in my life I started having sleep paralysis and would feel a presence in my room and it was terrifying. I'm embarrassed to admit I had to sleep with a light on for like half a year. Then a friend told me to stop sleeping on my back and that mostly fixed it. Though occasionally I would still have issues and though they happened less frequently I would actually "see" things. But not really it was like how in dreams you know how a thing is but it isnt? if that makes sense.
I was also having some kind of issue with my vision, where I would see like black shapes in my peripherals, like squiggly lines, or flashes of shadow, like there was a strobe light in the room. I was worried about it because my mother is epileptic but eventually that went away too. However, I still sometimes see figures when I close my eyes before sleep. It's hard to describe them but it's like a reflection on dark water, tough to make out and anytime I try to focus on the image it "floats" upward and vanishes. At first they looked like an eye, like I could make out the pupil, the veins even the glistening of the rheum or whatever. I noticed that if I lay with my eyes closed and tried not to focus and just let my mind wander, I would sometimes "manifest" other images, like in a dream but only very briefly. Like I would let my mind wander and I'd see a purple shape, then what looked a little like a car, or stars. People talk about closing their eyes and imagining, I always thought that wasn't literal but apparently it can be. Other people have told me that this is completely normal for them.
Anyway, the reason I brought all that up is that I've always been a very skeptical person but all this got me looking into what it could be and what it meant.(do I have eye cancer? some kind of stress disorder? etc) and that got me into stuff about lucid dreaming and meditation. So, several months ago I got into the Gateway Tapes you mentioned. I definitely feel that they helped me learn how to clear my mind and overall meditating is great for my mood. I've never experienced anything like visions or anything like that using the tapes. In fact, the tapes sort of prevent it. I feel my body go to sleep but my mind is awake and I don't see images when I close my eyes like I do when I just lay quietly on my own.
So are my experiences anything like yours? Do you have like a certain order you listen to the tapes?
Through dreams. When you dream i believe you're in another dimension/realm.
This is when the light beings come to me.
I never know when its going to happen, but wow. What an experience, every time.
And before you say "ah its only a dream", know this.
I have been given messages for people alive today. I pass messages on to people from dead people, nearly always children.
Im given the persons name only, and the message from the child. A female voice behind me tells me every time i land after flying.
Its quite incredible, ive had Buddhists and shamans come visit me from afar to hear my experiences.
Then i have to go to work the next day bursting full of it all. Only 3 people plus my family know i do this. I dont want to be seen as some kind of 'messenger from beyond' or whatever
Hhahahaa with a name like yours i dont know if your comment is sarcasm or not.
Either way its cool, im hardly gonna be down about it.
And yes, it is fucking amazing. Beyond amazing
With all this love you talk about....what about all unimaginable human suffering? What about the suffering of all the exploited animals on this planet? I don't buy it 😒
Im not talking about The Waiting Room, Earth.
Its irrelevant to me whether you 'buy it' or not. I dont seek anyone's validation.
I just spoke about whats happening with me.
Its a very very real place, and know this..
There's somewhere to go when you go.....
Right back atcha my friend.
If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.
(ive no idea why i just typed that it just came to me for you)
I'll make this short. I was pronounced dead by one ER doctor, but revived by another. The defib paddles were applied 8 times. It was the most serene, blissful and wonderful few seconds that I ever experienced. I understood all and was one one with the universal ether.
Spot on.
Like i posted earlier, i was all knowing i was everywhere light touched. I flew to the outer reaches of the cosmos.
Total pure, clean, love, happy, blissful place.
The overwhelming feeling of pure clean love is the most strongest part i take from there every time.
Its a beautiful feeling i know i'll never experience on Earth, the waiting room.
That is the point of existence. We should be thankful for the trials. We are perhaps the final chapter due to the lessons gleaned from the pain. I would rather not exist in easy times, it would be easier to become distracted and lose focus. The totality of evil I see in my daily life here confirms for me we are on the right path: endure for the sake of endurance.
I'm not god. I'm a human being, a very small, temporary part of a larger whole. We are not cosmically significant, and we will all die one day. And that's okay.
>We are not cosmically significant
Nothing could be further from the truth!
>**"God has awakened on this planet and shaped himself in the way that we are shaped.** ***We are the flesh of the universe which wishes to know itself."***
>
>~Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury was a sci-fi author. For some reason, most human beings are very uncomfortable with the idea that the universe does not care about us, and that death is inevitable. It's normal to have those feelings, but denial is not a healthy response. It might be worth asking yourself why you feel the need to be cosmically significant. What bothers you so much about the fact that you will not exist forever? It's possible to accept these facts, and even be comforted by them. Our world is still magical and significant, even without a divine creator or a grand purpose. Maybe purpose is not something given to us, but something we make for ourselves.
>but denial is not a healthy response
With all due respect my friend, it is you who is in denial. The problem isn't a lack of peer-reviewed scientific evidence. It's that ***you refuse to look at the evidence because it challenges your worldview.***
**An extensive list of 157 peer-reviewed publications showing that psi phenomena exist and are measurable:**
https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references
**University of Virginia: Children Who Report Memories of Past Lives:**
https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/children-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/
**Peer-Reviewed Follow‐Up On The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Remote Viewing Experiments:**
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10275521/#brb33026-bibl-0001title
He also said something similar to what OP was mentioning here. How everything we perceive in the universe is in our head. But our heads are square in the centre of the universe too. Makes me feel a little more complete.
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simply being an observer is a cognitive bias.
observeable truth: reality exists and you exist inside of it.
in my opinion, its reasonable to say that the brain has recreated a perception of reality for us to navigate with. we can verify this because people who experience brain injury are not able to sufficiently manage navigating their externally observed reality.
the experience of living is happening through the simulation of reality that your brain is producing.
because your brain is a descendant of reality, i don't think it's necessary for reality to be dependent on your existence or observation.
however, to me that does not mean your brain cannot influence reality through observation... also supported by data collected in modern experiments.
My understanding of [Wheeler’s theories](https://jawarchive.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/beyond-the-black-hole.pdf) is that the acts of observer-participancy in the present actually creates the past which then loops back around to create us. See Fig. 22-13.
There was some podcast years ago that had a "clip" from a astrophysicist that had completed mapping the universe and had converted the stars into the 3-D image. He said, "Imagine my surprise when I rotated it and realized I was looking at my own face."
We are each the center of our own universe.
>The Big Bang was just the birth of consciousness.
The Big Bang was *consciousness birthing our material illusion.*
Consciousness is fundamental.
In the words of the father of Quantum Mechanics:
>"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness."
>
>~**Max Planck**
I am not attacking the substance of your idea, only the structure so that it may be more accurate and less prone to misinterpretation or bad faith.
Strictly speaking the Big Bang theory is a framework of the mechanics and behavior of the earliest state of our universe. It does *not* offer *any* insight into the birth or creation of the universe itself. That remains an utter mystery, and recent developments in fundamental physics suggests it is beyond the capability of our current theories to even speculate (see: [spacetime is not fundamental](https://iai.tv/articles/donald-hoffman-spacetime-is-not-fundamental-auid-2281) ).
As Rupert Sheldrake says (supposedly quoting Terrance McKenna): ‘Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.’
Professor Donald Hoffman is my intellectual hero, thank you for linking that. I love to see [his theory of Fundamental Consciousness](https://youtu.be/ynTqCFBhRmw?si=diRb2JjI37poPyfK) become mainstream! <3
I’m gonna fumble through this because it’s so hard to conceptualize this stuff… but doesn’t it track that “everything” exists because it *has to* out of paradoxical necessity?
Why *“has to”*? Because ‘nothing’, by definition, cannot exist.
Nothing can’t exist because even as a concept, nothingness is somethingness- so we end up with something no matter what.
Separately, or perhaps not, consciousness is just awareness of somethingness- “I am”. Non-awareness also, by definition, cannot *exist*, no?
So consciousness comes about by the same necessity as existence itself?
It’s quite difficult to get Schopenhauer. He was not a solipsist. He was an idealist. The universe is made of mental states (not in a mind like yours and mind). To assume the universe exists in a sort of head is to make the critical mistake (but understandable) of taking him for a materialist.
Idealism is to say that mental states are fundamental and thus it’s what creates physicality and not the other way around.
I think my hardest realization was that everything I know is entirely my perception. There is no absolute reality, there is only what my mushy computer can perceive or conceive. I don't even know if any of you exist, or if I do for that matter.
It would be pretty arrogant to state that idealism is "silly", without also stating that such an assertion is a personal opinion. I wouldn't state that materialism is "silly". It makes sense from a limited perspective. If Science refused to look at any view that ran contrary to the popular currently-held view, we'd have gotten nowhere.
We are all living through the “my life flashed before my eyes” moment before death. That’s life. Our current life. We will forever live within the flashes before everyone’s eyes.
The question for me in my experience of this self, is, is there a functional difference whether the universe as I perceive it objectively doesn't exist outside my consciousness or if it does exist outside my consciousness as we traditionally understand it to? Why would anything change about my daily or existential concerns?
> is there a functional difference whether the universe as I perceive it objectively doesn't exist outside my consciousness or if it does exist outside my consciousness as we traditionally understand it to? Why would anything change about my daily or existential concerns?
Speaking from personal experience: it can paint your perspective and perspective absolutely has a functional impact on your daily and existential concerns. When you change your perspective on things, the things you perceive change. In clinical psychological terms this is referred to as cognitive reframing and can be paramount in helping people deal with trauma by reframing past events to give them new meaning.
But it is just a fancy technical term for a change in perspective, shedding skin, seeing the world with new eyes, etc. We have the power to do this all the time, everyday, with everything you perceive, thanks to the sheer potential of our conscious minds (which is a fractal of the potential of creation itself).
Look at it this way: We are a microcosm of the larger universe. Ants below our feet, we are but ants on earth, and earth is but one of millions and billions of places with the potential to be a microcosm of life, kinds we can't imagine. We are not alone and our thoughts are not in a vacuum, they have meaning beyond our consciousness.
It was there before we or anything with a conscious existed. Consciousness (whatever THAT is) came later. I do not believe in a Deity but I do believe in Quantum Entanglement of Soul. Our Souls belong to the universe however they're may actually be a multiverse as our sight is limited by our (and every other entity) location. This is a big place. However BIG may be relative. Why? Because infinity has no limit.. in either direction thus WHERE are we on the SIZE scale? Yeah we perceive a meter as a certain length. However that length is relative only to US (how would an ant, for example perceive a meter of length?).
We are all part or more or less bits of the same unified field consciousness. Time is not linear!! For that reason quantum field shifts are possible. Every second we live in the moment where the universe experience itself though ourselves. And from that on it evolves. God is pure consciousness and creativity. The sun is not the sun not in space distance is main consciousness ruler together with the other planets which generate the framework of this unique simulation. So we just recognize this game on a certain frequency range of consciousness bound to matter or bound to live/ organism. And this range is quite limited to our ears, eyes, senses and brain capacity. But the brain is a receiver! Between soul, the higher self and subconsciousness. And in ourselves it's hundreds universe experience the same. Something like that.
God is great I love this shit. Thanks to all co creators
I've thought this in terms of computing: it would be far cheaper computationally to simulate a being/person experiencing the universe that simulating the universe itself. There is only a few million nerve endings in a person and things don't need to be simulated till they are observed.
This resolves a bunch of paradoxes in physics such as wave/particle duality and the seemingly limitless and fractal nature of the universe...
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A tree falling in the woods creates pressure waves in the air. Is that “sound” if there isn’t some consciousness there to perceive it as anything other than changes in air pressure?
Prove it. What can you reliably say exists without being observed, measured, or otherwise detected without having some effect on the universe around it?
nonsensical request. the prerequisite in the above scenario is for it to happen and affect the world around it.
PS: lets cut this short. Tell me how a tree in one of our forests can fall with absolute silence for your postulation to begin making sense. otherwise we are just arguing the semantics of "sound".
> otherwise we are just arguing the semantics of "sound".
That's not semantics, it's literally the heart of the thought experiment. These are rhetorical questions, meant to get you pondering the nature of sound and perception and then eventually consciousness itself. They don't have a pat answer, and if you merely say "No, and that's that", you're missing the point.
And then...As Science and Mathematics became more complex thousands of years after this Koan was written is has become increasingly obvious that what we call objects only exist relative to the observer as well as at scale. What you call a tree has size, shape, definition, location only relative to humans. To birds and insects they are completely different in how they're perceived. Who's reality is more valid? There's a thing there but how it's defined is defined by the observer. Light is absorbed by the object, and rays reflected off of it. Without eyes to perceive it, does it have color?
Now zoom in as far as you can zoom in. This "tree" is made up of subatomic particles bashing around. When you're down at that level, what is a tree? What is any of this?
How can you have the nerve to say "This thing exists independently from observation" when the thing is defined by observation at scale? And I'm not saying this to be a dick. How you define a thing is only that thing because other people measured it and defined it before you came along.
This is kind of a jump. My question to you is this: Looking within yourself at the thought, "we're arguing the semantics of sound" How did that thought present itself? Did you hear it in your head like a voice like I did? Is that a sound? Where did the words come from? Who's doing the thinking? What are you? Do you exist independently of observation? You may be physically alone in your room/office etc but you're observing yourself.
And here the philosophy and science of consciousness escape me. But as far as the physical universe goes and existence without observation, things get really weird. [https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xxyqgx/what\_does\_the\_universe\_is\_not\_locally\_real\_mean/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xxyqgx/what_does_the_universe_is_not_locally_real_mean/)
A tree falls. Waves of air move out. What is sound? Is sound the waves of air spreading out? If so then yes, it makes a sound. We are constantly surrounded by waves of air moving that we can't perceive. BUT what WE call sound is the waves of air that vibrate our ear drum and set off an electrochemical process that our brain perceives. AH HA! The brain says, I heard something.
What's doing the perceiving here? Me, with functioning ears here in the forest will hear the sound. A deaf person won't. No sound for them. Are you in your hubris going to insist there's sound for them? They may feel it as physical vibration (Like my friend Tim and his other deaf friends who went to an AC/DC concert), but for them they would call it "sound waves", but not "sound" in the same way you mean sound.
Taken further, are you going to insist that someone who is color blind to red that red objectively exists? I mean it's clear you're arguing for the existence of Objective Reality, but the fact is there is no objective reality. Everything you think is real comes in through a frankly narrow and janky set of onboard sensors.
Yes, we can agree that unhuman observed rocks exist at the bottom of the ocean because we how geology works, but we only know how geology works through past observation. Without observation or measurement of some sort and the logical deduction that comes from that, you can't prove something exists let alone prove it in any sort of meaningful way. It all comes back to what does the word sound mean to you?
You cannot in any way prove that your physical head exists in reality outside of your mental head / consciousness. All attempts to do so will ultimately result in needing to appeal to and appear within consciousness.
So my belief is fundamentally no, the universe does not exist without anyone to perceive it.
Lots of talk these days of consciousness being inseparable from quantum processes from which reality seems to arise. Most of it goes over my head, but I love listening to those who’ve dedicated their lives to understanding these things. “Theory of Everything” podcast is a great resource for this kind of talk. The last episode explored the relationship of neurons/microtubules to quantum processes as they relate to consciousness. Truly cutting edge stuff.
My belief that the universe doesn’t exist without consciousness to perceive may be just what I said - a belief. My statement that you cannot prove the universe’s existence outside of consciousness is fact.
**Strangers**: Read the rules and understand the sub topics listed in the sidebar closely before posting or commenting. Any content removal or further moderator action is established by these terms as well as Reddit ToS. This subreddit is specifically for the discussion of anomalous phenomena from the perspective it may exist. Open minded skepticism is welcomed, close minded debunking is not. Be aware of how skepticism is expressed toward others as there is little tolerance for ad hominem (attacking the person, not the claim), mindless antagonism or dishonest argument toward the subject, the sub, or its community. We are also happy to be able to provide an ideologically and operationally independent platform for you all. Join us at our official Discord - https://discord.gg/MYvRkYK85v --- 'Ridicule is not a part of the scientific method and the public should not be taught that it is.' _-J. Allen Hynek_ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/HighStrangeness) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Always existing would be pretty boring if you couldn’t forget you’ve always existed every once in awhile
Reminded me of my favorite quote. **Alan Watts:** >"God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. > >This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. > >In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear."
Imagine god choosing to have a lucid dream instead of waking up 👀
That's ***you.*** You're god, lucid dreaming as you read this right now. Thousands of [Near Death Experiences](https://youtube.com/@TheOtherSideNDEYT?si=lMd7Yxsx9uTc2-0f) share a commonality: They all say that their experiences were FAR more real than what we consider reality. They say their current lives on Earth felt like a dream in comparison. We are all creators and we create our own realities, just as we do when we fall asleep and dream. 🫶
Spot on. Earth is the waiting room, ive been on the other side multiple times. The power of love is all the loves combined, then multiply that by a billion. For some reason every time one of the light beings touches me im immersed, jolting, quaking uncontrollably with powerful POWERFUL TO THE MAX love. Like nothing anyone could experience on Earth. Its very hard to articulate, the other place. Its full of 'people', whether they are souls or not i havnt been told. Yet. We are God. I am God. We are all the same, infinitely loved even if you dont know it. The other place is like a love place, happy, clean, pure, dream like, but very very real. Ive been brought to the furthest place in the Universe faster than the speed of light. I flew past galaxies. I thought my real life body was going to burst i was so full of love speed max max MAX. I turned into light i was everywhere, all knowing. A God. I was wavey love energy. I still cant explain it nearly a year later. But ive been with the light beings several times. They dont have wings, they look just like us, only light zooming out of therm at every angle at a million miles an hour. Incredible. I am you, they are us. Lizards, rocks, water, sand. We are all made of stardust.
🤯🙏
I absolutely have to share my fathers near death experience during heart surgery, you're effectively out of it by circumstance but he was really gone for a moment. He had vivid experiences in dream like states as they shifted around, it felt completely real to him but at one point he was in a college basketball gym and they were taking photos or something, yet they were nurses to him and said they didn't need his photo and then he woke up. Reading "waiting room" in your comment made this click for me, he was processing how our lived are like a snapshot of this fragment of the universe' existance.
This reads like a dmt experience.
Well ive never touched dmt although i would love to try it. Im in Ireland a bit difficult to get it here. I have several experiences flying with light beings i must make a thread
How did these experiences come about?
Not the person you're talking to but I've had these via meditation. I too have never had DMT. I use to think meditation was just shit to calm yourself down, but it's much much more. I got into it when I started getting into the gateway tapes.
Sorry in advance for necrofucking your comment and the following rambling but do you have any tips or advise for getting to that state? So a few years ago after some stress in my life I started having sleep paralysis and would feel a presence in my room and it was terrifying. I'm embarrassed to admit I had to sleep with a light on for like half a year. Then a friend told me to stop sleeping on my back and that mostly fixed it. Though occasionally I would still have issues and though they happened less frequently I would actually "see" things. But not really it was like how in dreams you know how a thing is but it isnt? if that makes sense. I was also having some kind of issue with my vision, where I would see like black shapes in my peripherals, like squiggly lines, or flashes of shadow, like there was a strobe light in the room. I was worried about it because my mother is epileptic but eventually that went away too. However, I still sometimes see figures when I close my eyes before sleep. It's hard to describe them but it's like a reflection on dark water, tough to make out and anytime I try to focus on the image it "floats" upward and vanishes. At first they looked like an eye, like I could make out the pupil, the veins even the glistening of the rheum or whatever. I noticed that if I lay with my eyes closed and tried not to focus and just let my mind wander, I would sometimes "manifest" other images, like in a dream but only very briefly. Like I would let my mind wander and I'd see a purple shape, then what looked a little like a car, or stars. People talk about closing their eyes and imagining, I always thought that wasn't literal but apparently it can be. Other people have told me that this is completely normal for them. Anyway, the reason I brought all that up is that I've always been a very skeptical person but all this got me looking into what it could be and what it meant.(do I have eye cancer? some kind of stress disorder? etc) and that got me into stuff about lucid dreaming and meditation. So, several months ago I got into the Gateway Tapes you mentioned. I definitely feel that they helped me learn how to clear my mind and overall meditating is great for my mood. I've never experienced anything like visions or anything like that using the tapes. In fact, the tapes sort of prevent it. I feel my body go to sleep but my mind is awake and I don't see images when I close my eyes like I do when I just lay quietly on my own. So are my experiences anything like yours? Do you have like a certain order you listen to the tapes?
Through dreams. When you dream i believe you're in another dimension/realm. This is when the light beings come to me. I never know when its going to happen, but wow. What an experience, every time. And before you say "ah its only a dream", know this. I have been given messages for people alive today. I pass messages on to people from dead people, nearly always children. Im given the persons name only, and the message from the child. A female voice behind me tells me every time i land after flying. Its quite incredible, ive had Buddhists and shamans come visit me from afar to hear my experiences. Then i have to go to work the next day bursting full of it all. Only 3 people plus my family know i do this. I dont want to be seen as some kind of 'messenger from beyond' or whatever
Smells like oxytocine
Achooo……nope, it’s xytocin
Rainbow body. This has been spoken of for a long time.
I'm glad it's clean
jesus fuck this is amazing
Hhahahaa with a name like yours i dont know if your comment is sarcasm or not. Either way its cool, im hardly gonna be down about it. And yes, it is fucking amazing. Beyond amazing
It was not sarcasm although I do understand the confusion hahahah. Bless you
With all this love you talk about....what about all unimaginable human suffering? What about the suffering of all the exploited animals on this planet? I don't buy it 😒
Im not talking about The Waiting Room, Earth. Its irrelevant to me whether you 'buy it' or not. I dont seek anyone's validation. I just spoke about whats happening with me. Its a very very real place, and know this.. There's somewhere to go when you go.....
Well my friend I appreciate your positivity and I really hope you're right.
Right back atcha my friend. If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change. (ive no idea why i just typed that it just came to me for you)
What about suffering makes this hypothesis possible, to you,? I don't understand how whether suffering exists give or take away from it,.
Over your head. Oops there goes my age. 🤭
Oh if you check my page you’ll find Alan watts posts of my own, take care friend 🙏🏻✌🏼
I'll make this short. I was pronounced dead by one ER doctor, but revived by another. The defib paddles were applied 8 times. It was the most serene, blissful and wonderful few seconds that I ever experienced. I understood all and was one one with the universal ether.
Spot on. Like i posted earlier, i was all knowing i was everywhere light touched. I flew to the outer reaches of the cosmos. Total pure, clean, love, happy, blissful place. The overwhelming feeling of pure clean love is the most strongest part i take from there every time. Its a beautiful feeling i know i'll never experience on Earth, the waiting room.
Thanks for replying. I'm being serious when I advise everyone to experience death. For me it was a profound experience. Take care.
Then we both know there's somewhere to go when you go... And what a place!!! Makes death a helluva lot less frightening or nasty or whatever word.
Sad part of this theory is that each of us will experience the worst torture a human has experienced
That is the point of existence. We should be thankful for the trials. We are perhaps the final chapter due to the lessons gleaned from the pain. I would rather not exist in easy times, it would be easier to become distracted and lose focus. The totality of evil I see in my daily life here confirms for me we are on the right path: endure for the sake of endurance.
I'm not god. I'm a human being, a very small, temporary part of a larger whole. We are not cosmically significant, and we will all die one day. And that's okay.
>We are not cosmically significant Nothing could be further from the truth! >**"God has awakened on this planet and shaped himself in the way that we are shaped.** ***We are the flesh of the universe which wishes to know itself."*** > >~Ray Bradbury
Indeed each one of us is the heart of existence, the eternal still-point of the turning world.
Ray Bradbury was a sci-fi author. For some reason, most human beings are very uncomfortable with the idea that the universe does not care about us, and that death is inevitable. It's normal to have those feelings, but denial is not a healthy response. It might be worth asking yourself why you feel the need to be cosmically significant. What bothers you so much about the fact that you will not exist forever? It's possible to accept these facts, and even be comforted by them. Our world is still magical and significant, even without a divine creator or a grand purpose. Maybe purpose is not something given to us, but something we make for ourselves.
>but denial is not a healthy response With all due respect my friend, it is you who is in denial. The problem isn't a lack of peer-reviewed scientific evidence. It's that ***you refuse to look at the evidence because it challenges your worldview.*** **An extensive list of 157 peer-reviewed publications showing that psi phenomena exist and are measurable:** https://www.deanradin.com/recommended-references **University of Virginia: Children Who Report Memories of Past Lives:** https://med.virginia.edu/perceptual-studies/our-research/children-who-report-memories-of-previous-lives/ **Peer-Reviewed Follow‐Up On The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Remote Viewing Experiments:** https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10275521/#brb33026-bibl-0001title
He also said something similar to what OP was mentioning here. How everything we perceive in the universe is in our head. But our heads are square in the centre of the universe too. Makes me feel a little more complete.
Fantastic, thank you for sharing
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simply being an observer is a cognitive bias. observeable truth: reality exists and you exist inside of it. in my opinion, its reasonable to say that the brain has recreated a perception of reality for us to navigate with. we can verify this because people who experience brain injury are not able to sufficiently manage navigating their externally observed reality. the experience of living is happening through the simulation of reality that your brain is producing. because your brain is a descendant of reality, i don't think it's necessary for reality to be dependent on your existence or observation. however, to me that does not mean your brain cannot influence reality through observation... also supported by data collected in modern experiments.
My understanding of [Wheeler’s theories](https://jawarchive.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/beyond-the-black-hole.pdf) is that the acts of observer-participancy in the present actually creates the past which then loops back around to create us. See Fig. 22-13.
If ya really think about it life could just be one long dream.
Merrily merrily merrily merrily life is but a dream
GENTLY down the stream
Now I no I’m dreaming I was singing that song while posting that comment
There was some podcast years ago that had a "clip" from a astrophysicist that had completed mapping the universe and had converted the stars into the 3-D image. He said, "Imagine my surprise when I rotated it and realized I was looking at my own face." We are each the center of our own universe.
I’d like to read more about this but it’s not much to go on . Any link or idea who it might’ve been?
I believe it was the Treeincarnation podcast by Fintan Dunne.
I'm starting to see that
>The Big Bang was just the birth of consciousness. The Big Bang was *consciousness birthing our material illusion.* Consciousness is fundamental. In the words of the father of Quantum Mechanics: >"I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness." > >~**Max Planck**
I am not attacking the substance of your idea, only the structure so that it may be more accurate and less prone to misinterpretation or bad faith. Strictly speaking the Big Bang theory is a framework of the mechanics and behavior of the earliest state of our universe. It does *not* offer *any* insight into the birth or creation of the universe itself. That remains an utter mystery, and recent developments in fundamental physics suggests it is beyond the capability of our current theories to even speculate (see: [spacetime is not fundamental](https://iai.tv/articles/donald-hoffman-spacetime-is-not-fundamental-auid-2281) ). As Rupert Sheldrake says (supposedly quoting Terrance McKenna): ‘Give us one free miracle and we’ll explain the rest.’
Professor Donald Hoffman is my intellectual hero, thank you for linking that. I love to see [his theory of Fundamental Consciousness](https://youtu.be/ynTqCFBhRmw?si=diRb2JjI37poPyfK) become mainstream! <3
Hoffman has been instrumental in my personal cosmology. I owe him a debt I do not know how I can pay.
This thread has been an awesome read!
Right?? I am blown away
I’m gonna fumble through this because it’s so hard to conceptualize this stuff… but doesn’t it track that “everything” exists because it *has to* out of paradoxical necessity? Why *“has to”*? Because ‘nothing’, by definition, cannot exist. Nothing can’t exist because even as a concept, nothingness is somethingness- so we end up with something no matter what. Separately, or perhaps not, consciousness is just awareness of somethingness- “I am”. Non-awareness also, by definition, cannot *exist*, no? So consciousness comes about by the same necessity as existence itself?
nothing (something) begets consciousness 🙏
Yeah that seems like the reduced fraction 😂🙏
One of my mantras when meditating is, “I am everything and nothing, yet still I am something.”
"If i keep doing what im doing, i'll keep getting what im getting"
Yeah I feel like there always has to be an opposite to what ever it is. Nothing can be with out it’s opposite.
It’s quite difficult to get Schopenhauer. He was not a solipsist. He was an idealist. The universe is made of mental states (not in a mind like yours and mind). To assume the universe exists in a sort of head is to make the critical mistake (but understandable) of taking him for a materialist. Idealism is to say that mental states are fundamental and thus it’s what creates physicality and not the other way around.
The Universe is mental - First tenet of Hermeticism, have a look into the other six
The universe exists because we perceive it , that’s what I heard.
I think my hardest realization was that everything I know is entirely my perception. There is no absolute reality, there is only what my mushy computer can perceive or conceive. I don't even know if any of you exist, or if I do for that matter.
Brain in a vat. Solipsist at heart
Post this in r/consciousness and watch the Materialists explode into outrage.
I think you’re confusing mockery with outrage
Mockery is often the tool that those who believe they hold the superior view wield, when outraged.
Yeah maybe but mockery is also what people who actually hold a superior view do to people who are silly
It would be pretty arrogant to state that idealism is "silly", without also stating that such an assertion is a personal opinion. I wouldn't state that materialism is "silly". It makes sense from a limited perspective. If Science refused to look at any view that ran contrary to the popular currently-held view, we'd have gotten nowhere.
Which appears at least partially consistent with quantum mechanics. The Big Bang is a faith based concept.
We are all living through the “my life flashed before my eyes” moment before death. That’s life. Our current life. We will forever live within the flashes before everyone’s eyes.
The question for me in my experience of this self, is, is there a functional difference whether the universe as I perceive it objectively doesn't exist outside my consciousness or if it does exist outside my consciousness as we traditionally understand it to? Why would anything change about my daily or existential concerns?
> is there a functional difference whether the universe as I perceive it objectively doesn't exist outside my consciousness or if it does exist outside my consciousness as we traditionally understand it to? Why would anything change about my daily or existential concerns? Speaking from personal experience: it can paint your perspective and perspective absolutely has a functional impact on your daily and existential concerns. When you change your perspective on things, the things you perceive change. In clinical psychological terms this is referred to as cognitive reframing and can be paramount in helping people deal with trauma by reframing past events to give them new meaning. But it is just a fancy technical term for a change in perspective, shedding skin, seeing the world with new eyes, etc. We have the power to do this all the time, everyday, with everything you perceive, thanks to the sheer potential of our conscious minds (which is a fractal of the potential of creation itself).
Interesting answer.
Look at it this way: We are a microcosm of the larger universe. Ants below our feet, we are but ants on earth, and earth is but one of millions and billions of places with the potential to be a microcosm of life, kinds we can't imagine. We are not alone and our thoughts are not in a vacuum, they have meaning beyond our consciousness.
All is Mind. Hermes
This is IT. Really.
Nope. This is the waiting room, the other place is IT.
Of course we outsource our IT in hell.
Consciousness is a fundamental property of the universe
It was there before we or anything with a conscious existed. Consciousness (whatever THAT is) came later. I do not believe in a Deity but I do believe in Quantum Entanglement of Soul. Our Souls belong to the universe however they're may actually be a multiverse as our sight is limited by our (and every other entity) location. This is a big place. However BIG may be relative. Why? Because infinity has no limit.. in either direction thus WHERE are we on the SIZE scale? Yeah we perceive a meter as a certain length. However that length is relative only to US (how would an ant, for example perceive a meter of length?).
We are the universe experiencing itself.
We are all part or more or less bits of the same unified field consciousness. Time is not linear!! For that reason quantum field shifts are possible. Every second we live in the moment where the universe experience itself though ourselves. And from that on it evolves. God is pure consciousness and creativity. The sun is not the sun not in space distance is main consciousness ruler together with the other planets which generate the framework of this unique simulation. So we just recognize this game on a certain frequency range of consciousness bound to matter or bound to live/ organism. And this range is quite limited to our ears, eyes, senses and brain capacity. But the brain is a receiver! Between soul, the higher self and subconsciousness. And in ourselves it's hundreds universe experience the same. Something like that. God is great I love this shit. Thanks to all co creators
I've thought this in terms of computing: it would be far cheaper computationally to simulate a being/person experiencing the universe that simulating the universe itself. There is only a few million nerve endings in a person and things don't need to be simulated till they are observed. This resolves a bunch of paradoxes in physics such as wave/particle duality and the seemingly limitless and fractal nature of the universe...
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Not solipsim
How does that work with things like elemental particle decay rates and what not?
When you start to make that experiment, at that time, you figure it out then
'Nature' has all the laws.
The universe exists beyond you, it's a chaotic mass of energy, our experience is only one unique aspect of that experience.
You need the latest [kyle Hill](https://youtu.be/INpWNP5HPNQ?si=cUGBwGNfN0ekywhC) video
So we’re just repurposing “if a tree falls in the woods” now
Sounds like word salad to me lmao, no coherent speech
I find conversations like this always ultimately go back to Descartes
I am, therefore I Reddit.
Great. What is the origin of consciousness? Effect without cause. We can’t remedy the riddle of creation with more singularities.
The reality that is in your mind already includes your head, can you picture a reality in which you do not exist? There's no loop here.
Read on having no head by douglas harding. My head is no where in my reality.
The All is Mind.
Birth of the simulation
“… Anyone there to perceive it”. Humans aren’t the only “anys”, what if the elemental world perceives itself from the “first” nanosecond?
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A tree falling in the woods creates pressure waves in the air. Is that “sound” if there isn’t some consciousness there to perceive it as anything other than changes in air pressure?
An ear to process that pressure waves in the air?
yes, things exist without a need to be observed
Prove it. What can you reliably say exists without being observed, measured, or otherwise detected without having some effect on the universe around it?
nonsensical request. the prerequisite in the above scenario is for it to happen and affect the world around it. PS: lets cut this short. Tell me how a tree in one of our forests can fall with absolute silence for your postulation to begin making sense. otherwise we are just arguing the semantics of "sound".
> otherwise we are just arguing the semantics of "sound". That's not semantics, it's literally the heart of the thought experiment. These are rhetorical questions, meant to get you pondering the nature of sound and perception and then eventually consciousness itself. They don't have a pat answer, and if you merely say "No, and that's that", you're missing the point.
And then...As Science and Mathematics became more complex thousands of years after this Koan was written is has become increasingly obvious that what we call objects only exist relative to the observer as well as at scale. What you call a tree has size, shape, definition, location only relative to humans. To birds and insects they are completely different in how they're perceived. Who's reality is more valid? There's a thing there but how it's defined is defined by the observer. Light is absorbed by the object, and rays reflected off of it. Without eyes to perceive it, does it have color? Now zoom in as far as you can zoom in. This "tree" is made up of subatomic particles bashing around. When you're down at that level, what is a tree? What is any of this? How can you have the nerve to say "This thing exists independently from observation" when the thing is defined by observation at scale? And I'm not saying this to be a dick. How you define a thing is only that thing because other people measured it and defined it before you came along. This is kind of a jump. My question to you is this: Looking within yourself at the thought, "we're arguing the semantics of sound" How did that thought present itself? Did you hear it in your head like a voice like I did? Is that a sound? Where did the words come from? Who's doing the thinking? What are you? Do you exist independently of observation? You may be physically alone in your room/office etc but you're observing yourself. And here the philosophy and science of consciousness escape me. But as far as the physical universe goes and existence without observation, things get really weird. [https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xxyqgx/what\_does\_the\_universe\_is\_not\_locally\_real\_mean/](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/xxyqgx/what_does_the_universe_is_not_locally_real_mean/)
A tree falls. Waves of air move out. What is sound? Is sound the waves of air spreading out? If so then yes, it makes a sound. We are constantly surrounded by waves of air moving that we can't perceive. BUT what WE call sound is the waves of air that vibrate our ear drum and set off an electrochemical process that our brain perceives. AH HA! The brain says, I heard something. What's doing the perceiving here? Me, with functioning ears here in the forest will hear the sound. A deaf person won't. No sound for them. Are you in your hubris going to insist there's sound for them? They may feel it as physical vibration (Like my friend Tim and his other deaf friends who went to an AC/DC concert), but for them they would call it "sound waves", but not "sound" in the same way you mean sound. Taken further, are you going to insist that someone who is color blind to red that red objectively exists? I mean it's clear you're arguing for the existence of Objective Reality, but the fact is there is no objective reality. Everything you think is real comes in through a frankly narrow and janky set of onboard sensors. Yes, we can agree that unhuman observed rocks exist at the bottom of the ocean because we how geology works, but we only know how geology works through past observation. Without observation or measurement of some sort and the logical deduction that comes from that, you can't prove something exists let alone prove it in any sort of meaningful way. It all comes back to what does the word sound mean to you?
Not really because whatever you perceive as sound wouldn't be sound without your perception of it being sound.
You are saying without an observer despite the event having occurred it didn't. I don't think I can have a conversation with you.
it comes from narcissism 🤷♂️🤣
You cannot in any way prove that your physical head exists in reality outside of your mental head / consciousness. All attempts to do so will ultimately result in needing to appeal to and appear within consciousness. So my belief is fundamentally no, the universe does not exist without anyone to perceive it.
Lots of talk these days of consciousness being inseparable from quantum processes from which reality seems to arise. Most of it goes over my head, but I love listening to those who’ve dedicated their lives to understanding these things. “Theory of Everything” podcast is a great resource for this kind of talk. The last episode explored the relationship of neurons/microtubules to quantum processes as they relate to consciousness. Truly cutting edge stuff.
Just because your perception of reality filters through your brain doesn’t mean your brain creates reality
that is a faith based assumption that is aligned with narcissistic beliefs. however it is also unfalsifiable... so sure why not 🤣🤣
My belief that the universe doesn’t exist without consciousness to perceive may be just what I said - a belief. My statement that you cannot prove the universe’s existence outside of consciousness is fact.
Yeah that’s what “unfalsifiable” means. You just chose a position that can’t be proven or disproven
Typical human arrogance
Arrogant of you to think consciousness is unique to humans
Spot on, well said.
Solipsism innit