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dkmonk said:
An intrusion on your senses?

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Powdered_Toastman said:
First off, if the world I live in is an illusion, why is it such a consistent illusion?

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Because the people who would attest to such an idea have become more aware of the nature of how their perceptions function, and then become confused into thinking that, due to this manner of functioning, that which they perceive isn't actually real. Of course they are wrong, but at least they've started down the path to more awareness of how perception functions.

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Powdered_Toastman said:
First off, if the world I live in is an illusion, why is it such a consistent illusion?

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If you put me and a friend in a room with an orange, we'd both be able to see and interact with the orange.

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My friend doesn't see the orange as a grape or a piranha.

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My point being, how come we are all part of the same illusion? Our perceptions may vary slighty (eg/ my friend is colorblind), but our sensory input of the world is the same.

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I'm mainly asking because I read somewhere that there's a quantum mechanics principle based on this very idea.

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I mean, it's a cute idea to muse that life as we know it is all some grand illusion, or that the entire planet is one atom inside a gigantic creature who itself is but an atom inside an even larger creature, and so on ad nauseum.

However, this just isn't practical when faced with even the lightest level of scrutiny. First off, if the world I live in is an illusion, why is it such a consistent illusion? If you put me and a friend in a room with an orange, we'd both be able to see and interact with the orange. My friend doesn't see the orange as a grape or a piranha. My point being, how come we are all part of the same illusion? Our perceptions may vary slighty (eg/ my friend is colorblind), but our sensory input of the world is the same.

I'm mainly asking because I read somewhere that there's a quantum mechanics principle based on this very idea.

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Samurai Drifter said:
I don't know that it's all that consistent. Anyone living a thousand years ago would have a completely different view of reality than we have today, and someone living a thousand years in the future might as well.

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A completely different view? That seems like a complete exaggeration to me.

Beyond that, the difference is that the world views of the past have been built upon. I really don't agree at all with the conception that what you refer to here is any kind of basis to consider that the world isn't actually all that consistent.

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circastes said:
We all see the same illusion because we are all the same mind.

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concepts are rooted in the essence of things, therefore truth has an objective norm in the real.

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fireworks_god said:
A completely different view? That seems like a complete exaggeration to me.

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Beyond that, the difference is that the world views of the past have been built upon.

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I really don't agree at all with the conception that what you refer to here is any kind of basis to consider that the world isn't actually all that consistent.

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Form and Emptiness... a common Buddhist pitfall.



Just found this amazingly insightful bit somewhere on Reddit:

"The Heart Sutra puts it nicely: 'Form is emptiness, and emptiness is form.'  No distinction between the two.  If you think you are going to kill all desires because the world is an empty illusion, you are ignoring the second half of that formula.  Someone who does that is called a 'void-dweller.'  It's almost as if they take 'nothingness' to be a thing itself, and they cling to that thing, which is to miss the whole point."

So don't be a void-dweller!  Clap not your hands over your ears while muttering incantations that "it's nothing but Samsara, nothing but Samsara!"  Reject not the Many in favor of the One, nor the One in favor of the Many!  Merely accept both as perspectives, nothing more.  Condone not the suffering of others nor the evils of mankind as naught but illusion spawned from Demon Mara!

From Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig:

"But one day in the classroom the professor of philosophy was blithely expounding on the illusory nature of the world for what seemed the fiftieth time and Phædrus raised his hand and asked coldly if it was believed that the atomic bombs that had dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were illusory.  The professor smiled and said yes. That was the end of the exchange.

Within the traditions of Indian philosophy that answer may have been correct, but for Phædrus and for anyone else who reads newspapers regularly and is concerned with such things as mass destruction of human beings that answer was hopelessly inadequate. He left the classroom, left India and gave up."

As Phædrus finds out later, however, giving up is hardly satisfactory.  The question then remains: how to reconcile such contradictory perspectives that form is emptiness and emptiness form?

All I can say on the subject is "Mu."

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In 1979, Pirsig's son Chris, who figured prominently in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, was stabbed to death during a mugging outside the San Francisco Zen Center.

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OrgoneConclusion said:
Sensing danger and reading body language is a super-human feat?

If not then, when does this alleged increased awareness come into play? When sitting with eyes closed?

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I don't think any claims were made for "awareness" being like a Spidey-Sense.

It's used more in a metaphysical sense, as in being aware of who and what you are.

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It's used more in a metaphysical sense, as in being aware of who and what you are.

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OrgoneConclusion said:
That is hardly more useful than being aware of your surroundings. It is difficult to meditate when you are dead.

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Samurai Drifter said:
It's not saying totally disregard your surroundings, either. In this day and age most of us can manage to survive without constantly paying attention to everything going on around us. We no longer have to worry about being eaten by tigers at the watering hole.

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Tell that to the aforementioned stabbing victim. Or did you think that being eaten by tigers was a daily occurrence for earlier humans?

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Samurai Drifter said:
The greeks of a thousand years ago believed the Sun was a god, and that there was a tribunal of celestial beings living on Mt. Olympus. That was their reality at that time. It was also believed that the world was flat and that Earth was the center of the Universe.

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Now science has uprooted these truths once so strongly believed -- but as our science advances, what will we discover that we have been wrong about?

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Some of them have. Some of them have been completely discarded (like many I mentioned above).

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I'm not saying that it is or isn't, only that its possible.

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fireworks_god said:
But the understanding that we have until this point is that things, from an objective standpoint, have been consistent. Your citing of how humans' world-views haven't stayed consistent over time does not reflect on the consistency of how things have been objectively.

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Samurai Drifter said:
But "the way they have been objectively" is just a projection on our part, based on what we have observed. People in the past had a different idea of the way things "objectively" were, as people in the future likely will as well. That's what I'm getting at.

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windowlikcer said:
Your example of two people in a room looking at an orange is simply an issue of physics, not quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics serves as sort of the basis from which all other sciences arise. It isn't really meant to easily explain the nature of such large things as oranges and people. That is more in the realm of physics, which focuses on approximating the behaviors of large objects.

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I always thought quantum mechanics was physics....

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OrgoneConclusion said:
Nuh uh. If we believe hard enough, we can levitate and stuff.

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fireworks_god said:

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windowlikcer said:
Your example of two people in a room looking at an orange is simply an issue of physics, not quantum mechanics. Quantum mechanics serves as sort of the basis from which all other sciences arise. It isn't really meant to easily explain the nature of such large things as oranges and people. That is more in the realm of physics, which focuses on approximating the behaviors of large objects.

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I always thought quantum mechanics was physics....

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Well...physics is quantum mechanics at its core. Along with chemistry, biology and the rest. But if you wanted to describe an orange's mass, you'd use physics to make things easy on yourself. However, if you wanted to describe the location of the electrons inside the orange...you'd use quantum mechanics. And then you'd find out they are everywhere and no where at once. 

But seriously. This shit haunts me 24/7.

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windowlikcer said:
But if you wanted to describe an orange's mass, you'd use physics to make things easy on yourself. However, if you wanted to describe the location of the electrons inside the orange...you'd use quantum mechanics.

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The problem I think is that you keep saying saying physics, in opposition to quantum mechanics or quantum physics, but you really should be saying "classical physics". That's how one typically denotes the difference between these two branches of physics.

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Icelander said:
How about classical music? Can't leave that out of the equation.

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