Your Own Private Universe
April 1st, 2005 by Steve Pavlina
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Can you prove the universe exists outside your perceptions of it?
Everything you experience of the universe comes through your perceptions or takes place in your imagination. Everything. All that you perceive to be scientific or logical or objective still comes through your senses and thoughts — people, places, events, dreams, … everything.
Here are some questions to consider:
How do you know you aren’t inside a simulation where everything you perceive is being fed to you, including the memories you claim as your own?
How can you be certain you even existed a year ago or a minute ago? If you came into being just now with all your memories, how would you know?
How do you know any of the other people you encounter are actually conscious themselves and aren’t just projections, like NPCs in a role-playing game? Have you ever experienced anyone else’s consciousness but your own?
How can there be any validity to claims of the existence of an objective universe outside yourself when you have no way of escaping your own limited viewpoint?
How can you prove the existence of anything outside your simulation without reference to the simulation itself?
When you aren’t perceiving or thinking about something, does it still exist? Can you even prove that a rock still exists when you aren’t actively perceiving it? Do the people in your life continue to exist when you aren’t with them? Or is the simulation more efficient than that, only generating what you’re experiencing right this instant?
When you have a dream, are the characters in your dream conscious, or are they projections of your own mind?
If you dream you’re in a room, does anything outside that room exist? Does your dream world bother to simulate what you cannot perceive?
Why do you think your waking world is any different than your dream world? Why do you think one occurs in your mind and the other outside it? Is it possible that both are occurring only within your mind?
Are you perhaps the only conscious being that exists in your universe? Is this a more or less valid assumption than to conclude that all the other characters you encounter are just as conscious as you are? Do you make this assumption when you dream?
You’ve been taught that you are a thinking object walking around in a material world. But is it possible that the material world is only a simulations that exists within your mind?
What if the entire universe only consists of what you perceive right now in this moment? What if outside of what you perceive lies nothing at all?
Have you ever seen glitches in your simulation?
Have you ever tried consciously directing your thoughts to make changes in the simulation (i.e. acting upon the simulation itself instead of within it)? Are you aware of what happens when you do this?
When your thoughts become incongruent with the simulation, which one of you adapts to the other?
When you focus on something intensely, does its presence in your universe increase?
Do you simulate a past and future for yourself to create the illusion of time? Do you project your past onto your future? Are you aware that you don’t have to do that?
Does your simulation teach you what to think about, or do you teach it what to simulate?
Why do you become tired the longer the simulation runs continuously? Why do you need to sleep? What happens to your simulation when you do?
What does your belief in objective reality do to your simulation? What would happen to your simulation if you believed it was totally subjective?
Are you free to think whatever you want?
When was the last time you created a thought that was not a reaction to some part of the simulation?
How often do you turn off the simulation? How does it feel when you do this? Do you even know how to turn it off?
Thought for food….
April 1st, 2005 at 1:00 pm
Hi Steve, Great Blog! I really enjoy your articles. Your recent one on tripling your productivity has been very helpful. Haven’t quite tripled mine yet, but it is much better.
As far as my perceptions of the universe… well it’s pretty easy for me. God created it. God created me. I have a simple childlike faith in Jesus Christ. Pretty simple and it doesn’t hurt my head thinking about it.
As far as your post about helping others, Ephesians 2:10 says: For we are God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.
Good luck on your journey,
John Richardson
April 1st, 2005 at 4:36 pm
Steve, I’m very good with maps. Whenever I travel with my family or friends, I’m usually the one with the map, figuring out where to go.
I’m telling you this in case you need a navigator for your hovercraft
April 1st, 2005 at 9:48 pm
I beg to differ on logic coming from empirical senses.
Logic is abstract and based on self-referential postulates, A=A.
Seems to suggest objective Truth, albeit confined to duality…
April 2nd, 2005 at 12:23 am
The old brain in a vat thing.
If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one around to hear it, does it still make a sound?
Am I Nick dreaming he’s a butterfly or am I a butterfly dreaming it’s Nick?
I quite like religion in this respect: it gives you an arbitrary answer (God made us), without ANY proof, and asks you to believe it while actively discouraging you from looking at different answers.
April 2nd, 2005 at 3:10 am
Very interesting Steve, it seems like you have a strong belief in metaphysics and er the Matrix;) It’s a fascinating read, I have to say the only glitch in my ’simulation’, if my life were one, is that of deja-vu, which I’ve experienced a few times. Whoever wrote my RPG simulation obviously didn’t do enough testing!
Would it not be possible to prove the existance of more than one concious mind somehow? I am not an NPC in your simulation as I have conciously decided to write this, there must be some way of proving the universe isn’t one big simulation?
April 2nd, 2005 at 6:36 am
Even logic is a product of consciousness.
Your only experience of logic comes to you through your senses and your mind. There’s no evidence that it has validity anywhere outside your thoughts. Who’s to say that “if A->B, B->C, then A->C” still works outside your conscious awareness? Logic isn’t valid in your dreams, not even lucid ones. So our personal experience of logic is that it sometimes works (waking world), sometimes doesn’t (dream world). Yet we mistakenly assume it must be valid everywhere, even though it’s a product of our own creation.
April 2nd, 2005 at 8:08 am
Where does consciousness come from? Why does it exist at all?
Why would anyone (or anything) wish to feed to you all that you perceive?
Why would the people you encounter be projections, like NPCs in a role-playing game? What’s the reason?
Whom are you trying to serve – projections of your own mind? What for?
How many universes do you think there are and why?
Do you think there is an absolute reality to which we should wake up? Why or why not? Or do you think there is nothing absolute in this world? What makes you think so?
Is your mind an absolute thing (at least in your world)?
Don’t you doubt you exist at all?
April 2nd, 2005 at 9:31 am
Maybe tomorrow you’ll wake up in the shower and find this blog entry was just a dream.
April 2nd, 2005 at 9:43 am
Not likely since I don’t sleep in the shower.
April 2nd, 2005 at 10:51 am
Fa-yen, a Chinese Zen teacher, overheard four monks arguing about subjectivity and objectivity. He joined them and said: “There is a big stone. Do you consider it to be inside or outside your mind?”
One of the monks replied: “From the Buddhist viewpoint everything is an objectification of mind, so I would say that the stone is inside my mind.”
“Your head must feel very heavy,” observed Fa-yen, “if you are carrying around a stone like that in your mind.”
April 2nd, 2005 at 11:37 am
brilliant.
April 2nd, 2005 at 12:04 pm
The reason I have enjoyed reading you in the past — and I have read your articles since the Dexterity days — is that what you write has had strong practical application to how I live my life. However, the recent articles you’ve written seem to have a new-age flakiness that is causing me to lose interest. Perhaps I grew tired of these “the-problem-with-other-minds” questions because I was a philosophy student and didn’t find much use in these sorts of inquiries. I can entertain myself with these sorts of dilemmas at philosophy web sites. I hope you will return to your strengths and focus on helping us become more productive people.
For example, I thought when you were discussing how we create our own realities, that you were going to discuss how we don’t have to be bound by our past perceptions of ourselves. We can in fact change. You touched on that ever so lightly, but didn’t flesh it out. That sort of approach is practical and merges concepts with application. And it’s not out there in woo-woo land.
Finally, I want to say that what has helped me most about your writings in the past is that you often have a flair for using analogies in a powerful way. To cite just one example, you mentioned something to the effect that in order to change we must become like at rocket and get up a certain amount of momentum to break through certain barriers. This is a powerful concept that has had an effect on me. And your discussions of values and other areas are conceptual, but clearly trickle down to the application front. My request is selfish, partly because I have found you so helpful in the personal productivity arena. I just kind of glaze over when I read these extended metaphysical discussions. Because in the end, no matter what answer you give yourself, you still end up saying, “so what?” Ok. Suppose other minds don’t exist and I create my own reality. Or that my consciousness is being created by someone else. So what? Is it going to change the practical way I live my life? I doubt it. These reflections are meaningless to me. Give me something that will help me to live my life better. Most of your articles do, and for that I am grateful.
April 2nd, 2005 at 2:00 pm
Hi Kent,
“Practical” requires a context. What’s yours?
April 2nd, 2005 at 2:09 pm
The monk’s response to Fa-Yen should have been: “Your mind must be very weak if it cannot hold a stone.”
April 2nd, 2005 at 3:16 pm
Kent said: For example, I thought when you were discussing how we create our own realities, that you were going to discuss how we don’t have to be bound by our past perceptions of ourselves. We can in fact change.
If you want to find out more about this kind of stuff you should get Personal Power II by Tony Robbins. He even has a good quote for this: “The past does not equal the future.” I think Steve is just trying to do something different from the traditional personal development gurus. At first I didn’t understand why he’s doing this either, but I’m slowly starting to. I think people get so caught up in the “practical” things that they never bother to dig deeper into the point of life itself. Of course the practical things are good to master as well, and Tony Robbins does an excellent job at this. If you want to get Personal Power II for about half the price on his own site, go to stressless.com and search for “Anthony Robbins” (without the quotes). For $100 you get 24 tapes full of priceless info (you can get CDs at Tony’s site, but they cost $210, and tapes cost $180 there).
April 2nd, 2005 at 3:32 pm
Hi Steve:
I’m with Kent, your blog is quickly losing my interest. I have really enjoyed your writing as it dealt with time management, motivation, goal setting, and productivity. I believe that is the point of this blog, right? Of course, it’s your blog and you can do what you want with it, but it’s my time, and I hate to waste it. In fact, I just wasted five minutues even responding to this drivel. But, maybe, in “your own private universe”, there is no better way to spend the day!
John
April 2nd, 2005 at 3:53 pm
Perhaps I should clarify my intentions for this site. I’ll make a new post to that effect….
April 3rd, 2005 at 9:17 am
You got me thinking. Maybe this is a naive question, but here it goes anyway… if I understand you correctly, you say you can change the reality around you using your thoughts, for example, if you believe in sinchronicity, you will start experiencing sinchronicity. OK, assuming that’s true, it means your thoughts can change reality in very complex ways, and in a lot of different places, to make coincidences happen.
As the changes become more complex and widespread, the potential of changing something that contradicts other people’s reality also increases. In other words, I think making sinchronicity happen is a lot of work.
Why can’t you make much simpler changes that probably don’t affect as many people’s reality but is directly measurable, such as changing the color of your cat?
April 3rd, 2005 at 10:04 am
I don’t see there being a problem with contradicting other people’s reality, at least not for me. Whenever that happens, then from my perspective, those people just fall out of my reality. They simply cease to exist within the reality that comes through my senses. If I stop believing in something, then all the staunch supporters of whatever that belief is just fall out of my consciousness. If I start believing in something new, then the people associated with that belief all start appearing. It’s a lot like directing a movie; whatever you think about causes certain characters to come to the forefront while others fall out of the camera range.
The question about changing the color of my cat won’t help for three reasons. First, I don’t have a cat. Secondly, I’m colorblind. And thirdly, the question itself comes from a paradigm that would make this impossible. You won’t see cats changing colors as long as you believe it doesn’t happen in your reality. And if you did believe in the power of thoughts to control reality, you’d probably be trying to do much more interesting things than coloring cats. You are trying to see first and then believe, but you have it backwards. You’ll see it when you believe it. If you don’t believe it, you’ll never see it.
If I were to go and change a cat’s color, you’d never see it. If I told you I did it, you wouldn’t believe me. Any data I show you will only be filtered in a way that you’ll easily tear it to shreds. It won’t be convincing. What is “out there” can’t convince you of anything until you choose to believe.
Someone on my side of the fence will know also that people with different beliefs can’t share the same reality. So if there are a bunch of us cat colorers out there, we’re not going to bother to try to prove it to anyone. The people who need proof simply won’t intersect our reality very much; they’ll fall off the radar.
April 4th, 2005 at 11:33 am
Steve, have you ever read the book “The Invisible Path to Success”? It’s a pretty good book that discusses synchronicity by using a movie director/actor analogy.
Basically, on the subconscious level, you are alot like a movie director of your own life and you can even coordinate events “off-stage” with other movie directors. For example, if someone really really REALLY wants to buy the best car, and thinks about it day and night, his/her off-stage director will then coordinate with another off-stage director of someone who really really REALLY wants to sell his car to a worthy owner. If both desires match up “off-stage”, then real life events that occur “on-stage” will start to invisibly coordinate to where the two people, or “actors”, will inevitably meet-up at the right moment. One person may stumble across someone’s classified ad at exactly the right moment, while she happens to be at a shopping center two blocks away from the seller’s house. Or one person may make a comment to a friend of a friend of a friend about wanting to sell his car, and the buyer and seller connect that way.
Disclaimer: “Directors”, “actors”, “on-stage”, “off-stage” are all just terms to help draw out the analogy for explaining the synchronicity phenomenon. I’m sure that other analogies are more/less helpful to others.
April 4th, 2005 at 11:11 pm
Excellent article, Steve!
Still the only thing is unexplained – it is when the simulation ends forever…
July 6th, 2005 at 12:28 pm
I think nothing can be proven because we cannot disprove infinity.
Therefore having an opinion is strictly personal and understanding is limited.
When faith will bring us to God, we shall truly understand the universe.
Until then, self-indulgence is vain.
Thank you.