Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Pavlina  @Paul: You're basically describing solipsism. And that's fine... nothing wrong with that at all. But here's a suggestion as to how to get from there to the perspective of subjective reality.
These directions may sound a bit strange, but it's the nature of the beast. - Consider that you may in fact be just as fake as the other dream characters. You're all just phony projections, and none of you are real. Consider this both for your dreams and your waking reality.
- Now consider that the other characters may be just as real, conscious, and independent as you are, both while you're dreaming and awake.
- Finally, consider that both possibilities can exist simultaneously without being in conflict, both in the dream world and the waking world. Each is simply a lower order projection of a higher order, multi-dimensional reality.
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Would you mean that when I have a lucid dream, the "other characters" are just as real and conscious as me? Or do you mean only in "reality" when I'm awake the "others" are real, but in my lucid dreams they are not?
What I don't get is if my ego (Paul) can have a dream, and inside that dream the other characters are capable of acting totally convincingly like other people each with their own agenda's, yet are all just projections of my Paul ego, why couldn't all of life be like that?
Why can YOU and everyone not just be a projection of my ego? I've had times when I thought of writing a PD article, and then I get on my computer, go to your site and you've already written that article a few hours earlier. I've had times when I solve an issue in my life and in a weird way all the people around me have kind of solved that same issue in their lives too. I've had instances where I come up with a phrase or saying, such as "Manifestation without Devastation" and I think of that phrase, and then I don't say it to anyone and they say the exact same phrase to me.
It's like there are all these little hints that I keep seeing that others are actually just me. Almost like "different versions" of me.
I have no doubt that at the primal level, my ego is fake. I am just a "single-misguided thought" trying to return to truth, however I think that MY ego is the ONLY ego, perhaps projected onto many many multiple characters, but ONLY experienced through this one EGO named PAUL in this very moment. I cannot experience consciousness from any other EGO's out there, including you, or anyone else on this forum or the other 7 billion people out there, so I can only assume that I am the only conscious one.
Sure, in the next nano-second maybe Paul VWOOPS out of existance to be replaced with Steve Pavlina and I experience this forum from your point of view or someone else, but then I would only experience consciousness from your point of view ONLY and Paul would no longer exist but the next moment he might exist again. It is only the fact that me as consciousness doesn't take my memories with me when I travel from Steve to Paul and back that the illusion is that there is more than 1 of me.
Maybe we're saying the same thing.
???
Here's a question. If I get on an airplane, fly down to vegas to see you, and I sit in your living room and we have an arm wrestle. I would experience that arm wrestle only from my point of view. Are you saying that there would be two consciousnesses in that room arm wrestling at that time? Or are you saying that 1 consciousness would be arm wrestling with itself using 2 avatars?
And if it is 1 consciousness experiencing itself through 2 avatars, would the purpose of that be simply so that it can experience what it's like to be both the person that wins and the person that loses the arm wrestle?
If so, as consciousness version Paul wouldn't it be in the best interest of ALL consciousness for Paul to be as selfish as possible - in this particular case to try to win the armwrestle, so that consciousness ALL could experience winning? Or would it become pointless because whether Paul wins or Steve wins, consciousness ALL experiences both a win/loss at the same time?
I dont' know. I just keep coming back to the same thing. If I think that there are 7 billion people, my thinking is like "Crap people have a lot of problems out there.". Instead, when I think that *I* am the only Ego out there, when I see someone act negatively I think "What is this person's negativity trying to teach me? Why would I create this example for myself?" and when I see someone angry I seek anger inside me (my ego).
With my SINGLE EGO view, there IS only one ego, MY EGO, and I am 100% responsible for it. Everything I see out there is MY EGO showing itself to itself.
With your MULTIPLE EGO view, there is multiple ego's out there like STEVE EGO and PAUL EGO and we are all one consciousness (egoless) but it's split amongst multiple EGO's. In your example when I see STEVE EGO do something stupid, I don't try to correct it inside me (PAUL EGO), because STEVE EGO is seperate from PAUL EGO.
See how your view of multiple ego's gives away responsibility?
What am I missing?