do you guys ever think this is all oin youre head?

[cameroncameroncameron]

sometimes, i think that this is all in my head and im gonna wake up in a second and think this was all just a realy vivid amd maybe lucid dream. write back if you know what i mean.

[SecretSeven]

I know exactly what you mean. I feel like that all the time. I guess I just dislike my life so much, that I wish it weren't real. If my whole life is a lie, then all the suffering I've experience is also a lie. When did you start feeling like this? And what made you start thinking that it is all a dream? Did anything happen that made you think like that?

[Maguru]

I used to live in a dream world, then I woke up to find it was a bloody nightmare. I believe the nightmare is real (physical) and true, but are we creating it from a dream?
If so, then why would we dream ourselves so much suffering? The answer would lie in the effect your suffering has on you and others? How has it affected your sense of who you are?

Originally Posted by SecretSeven

I know exactly what you mean. I feel like that all the time. I guess I just dislike my life so much, that I wish it weren't real. If my whole life is a lie, then all the suffering I've experience is also a lie. When did you start feeling like this? And what made you start thinking that it is all a dream? Did anything happen that made you think like that?

[cameroncameroncameron]

it all started when i met and became freinds with some one,and he asked me the same question, then i noticed that i always had wondered that. its weird, like the whole world and everyone you know isnt real and everything you know is in youre head, but then that led me to think, just because its in youre head, doesnt mean its not real. and about that bad life stuff, i kow what that feels like, and i have my ups and downs too, but hang in there and play game, realy the only thing thats kept me alive until now is quriosity and fear of the unkown, you know, whats after death, but then i found out about astral projection and i feel whole, and more right in life, its realy weird, and it led me on to be more daring and stand up for myself more, because now im not scared of death, im waiting for it, you should get into it too.but hang in there man.if life gives you lemons, make lemonade, and if life gives you ****, make manouir.

[SecretSeven]

Do you still think it's all a dream?

[cameroncameroncameron]

sometimes. its a very depressing feeling too.

[SecretSeven]

I guess we'll only find out when we die lol. For me it isn't depressing. It's exciting. It's like a big mystery that I have to solve. But other times I feel like it's just wishful thinking.

[AtlantaArtist]

I guess we'll only find out when we die

"Or you can live/operate like it's true NOW and see what happens..."he said with an evil grin.

[cameroncameroncameron]

hahaha, oh i have to make this message longer or they wont let me post it, so, hahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahaha hahaahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahaha hahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahah ahhahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahhahahahahhah ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahh ahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahaahahah ahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahh ahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahaha hahahahahahahaahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahah ahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhaha hahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahha hahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahha hahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahaha hahaahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahaha hahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahhahahahhahahahhahahah ahhahahahahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahhahahahahhah ahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahh ahahahhahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahahahaahahah ahahahahhahahahahhahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahh ahahahahha

[OMG]

Sometimes we ponder too much about our past. It is good to clear our past and get back to our true selves. But once we get back, we should live in the moment so that we will not be overly anxious about the future or keep living in the past and create a reality that is a result of the past.

[Parthon]

I believe that life is a dream, but we aren't the dreamers. We are the avatars of the dreamer, the dreamer being source. From the dreamer comes everything, and from everything returns the dream. It curls into itself causing feedback and stability. Things happen according to a pattern, according to the rules of the dream.

The universe, life and everything is just a pattern of form in the matrix of the dream. This form is temporary and is kept alive by the illusion of time, which is created by the dreamer to have form exist. Form and time are interwoven, they cannot be seperated. With form comes beginning and end, birth and death. Death is only a part of form, you can't kill the dream. Source can't wake up either, because source is everything, so you don't have to worry about everything disappearing, and if it did, you wouldn't know.

We exist as avatars of the dream of source incarnated in form to experience. Death is not death but the unbinding of awareness from form. Death is nothing to be afraid of, it is bound with time. The only thing timeless is the dream and to connect to the dream you have to become timeless. The only way to become timeless is to remove the past and future from yourself, which means becoming present and totally aware and encompassed in the present moment. Once you are there you are timeless and connected with source. You now have all of reality to deal with whatever is going on right now as the avatar of source dreaming reality into existance so that you can experience growth through the interwoven threads of form and time.

The only question is, what do you want to do with it?

[OMG]

You are here for a reason. Once you know your true selves from the enlightenment of the source of light, you should carry out your mission. That should be your life purpose

[Spiritual]

I too had these thoughts, and still have. It comes close to solipsism, but it even goes beyond that. For me it doesn't feel really depressing, but it feels lonely though. When this is all a dream, that means we are the only one "really" here....

But then I get to the point, ok let's say this is a dream, then everything is unreal so I can just do what I want. So why ain't I living my ass off and not caring about others?

[cameroncameroncameron]

good point, but i dont think im gonna try anything stupid until i know this is a dream, until then, im gonna ride the wind.

[Cantando]

Originally Posted by cameroncameroncameron

good point, but i dont think im gonna try anything stupid until i know this is a dream, until then, im gonna ride the wind.

Life is a dream - La vida es Sueno (Calderon de la Barca).
But, actually, it doesn't matter if you consider what you experience is real or unreal. What matters, is that you experience it. If you understand it and see through it, life will take on a totally new meaning.

[sadavis00]

"consciousness is always conscious OF something", this little philosophical concept takes care of my doubt about whether or not it is all in my head.

[exquisitive]

Originally Posted by cameroncameroncameron

just because its in youre head, doesnt mean its not real.

Looks like someone's been reading Harry Potter. :P

Before I started really considering the idea of a subjective reality, I would have classed myself as firmly believing in a physical objective reality. I'm probably still about half there, at least in the way I behave, most of the time. Placing a different lens, as Steve would say, and viewing things with a different mindset has lead to a lot of very interesting insights for myself. What I've found is that it isn't a thing I can just switch on and off. When it gets to the whole law of attraction stuff, I find that it's necessary to "peel back" layers of belief, only the first of which is how I view the reality I'm experiencing. What I'm finding is that each layer forms a foundation upon which the layers above it are based. Simply saying reality is real or it's not only leads to another layer which has to be teased apart to make sense of the "reality layer." In some ways, it's a bit of a geometric progression, in terms of complexity, since starting from the idea that it /is/ real leads to a different type of layer than saying it's subjective. And so on, and so on, and so on. Hopefully this doesn't seem like so much blithering. Thanks.

[cameroncameroncameron]

yes dumbledores wise words have touched me

[SecretSeven]

If you believe in subjective reality - Everything is in your head. I only exist for as long as you believe I exist. As soon as you stop thinking about me, I poof out of existence. Only you are real.

[exquisitive]

Originally Posted by SecretSeven

If you believe in subjective reality - Everything is in your head. I only exist for as long as you believe I exist. As soon as you stop thinking about me, I poof out of existence. Only you are real.

I'm not sure that's exactly the way I'd put it. It's more a way of thinking about your reality. Your consciousness projects everything you perceive, including your body, your thoughts and your feelings. If I say I believe in subjective reality, I'm not saying that you "poof" out of existence when I'm not aware of you. For _my_ consciousness, however, you only exist as a probability, to get a little quantum for a second. You don't disappear, but you exist in a different, more indeterminate state for me. If you ceased to exist, then I would have no knowledge of you whatsoever. Since I have some knowledge of your existence, however minimal, you continue to exist for me, but only when I put my awareness on you. Of course the unanswerable question, for me as the subject, is whether you continue to exist when I'm not thinking of you. I can only say that what exists "for real" for me is what I'm aware of. Hence the use of the term subjective.

What you're describing sounds a lot like solipsism, which I have to admit is not a philosophical system I was terribly familiar with by name until I saw some of Steve's posts on the distinction between solipsism and subjective reality. He had a couple of really good posts on the subject which I think did a good job of laying out what the differences were and why he can accept subjective reality, but not solipsism.

Trying not to sound too fan-boy, but Steve's stuff has been hitting on a lot of things that I've been working through in the last year or two.

[cameroncameroncameron]

DOyou all think that this is in youre head?

[Groundless]

Originally Posted by Maguru

I used to live in a dream world, then I woke up to find it was a bloody nightmare. I believe the nightmare is real (physical) and true, but are we creating it from a dream?
If so, then why would we dream ourselves so much suffering? The answer would lie in the effect your suffering has on you and others? How has it affected your sense of who you are?

And, it allows an opportunity to transcend.

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by cameroncameroncameron

do you guys ever think that this is all in your head

But of course it is.

What have you EVER known, believed or understood about the universe, that was not a form of knowledge, belief or understanding ... that is, a state of your own mind?

[Spiritual]

Originally Posted by Acting Like Godot

But of course it is.

What have you EVER known, believed or understood about the universe, that was not a form of knowledge, belief or understanding ... that is, a state of your own mind?

Could you elaborate on this? How do you see a chair that is standing in front of you. Knowing that it is a chair which you can use to sit on is something of your mind. But just seeing the form, is that also something of your mind?

I'm curious to how your believes on this subject work out in practical sense.

[Amatrine]

Ok I finally found my quirk to this thoery. What about Santa Clause?
Millions of Chilldren think he exists, but he does not. There are no flying reindeer. So even with a strong powerful thought that he exists, he does not.

Santa has no awareness, but awareness has him. We have awarenes, but we have no santa.

Ama

[Acting Like Godot]

Excellent questions. I'll take them all.

Originally Posted by Spiritual

Could you elaborate on this? How do you see a chair that is standing in front of you. Knowing that it is a chair which you can use to sit on is something of your mind. But just seeing the form, is that also something of your mind?

Here you draw a conceptual distinction between:

(A) perception of a thing, and

(B) the mental processes leading to how that perception is interpreted.

Firstly, this is by no means by an easy distinction to draw. Consider for example the reticular activating cortex in the human brain. In a nutshell, what your senses actually perceive in your environment is heavily dictated by what your brain has already predisposed your senses to perceive.

In other words, it is too simplistic to say that (A) happens, and then (B) happens. More accurately, the mental processes in (B) determine whether (A) happens at all, and if it happens, how it happens.

If a chair is unimportant to you at that time, you may walk in and out of a room without perceiving how many chairs are in the room and what colour they are etc.

If, however, your career is in furniture design, you would automatically perceive and notice the type of chair, its colour, its design, its height, the materials used to construct it; the condition of its cushions etc.

Further readings on the RAS here. The article provides more compelling examples of how your mental processes affect your perception.

Food for thought - what you perceive ... will be real to you. What you strongly perceive .... will be very real to you. What you never perceive at all .... will not be real to you. You can never take "you" out of the equation. Nothing in your reality is real unless you perceive it to be real.

Secondly, let us consider what it means to perceive something. Light reflects off the chair and enters your eye, and electrical signals travel along the optic nerve to your brain, which (only if it is inclined to pay attention to those signals) will register "Chair". That is perception.

Consciousness, and the related mental processes, as you see, is key. If light reflects off the chair and enters the open eye of a largely brain-dead man, we would not say that the man has perceived the chair. So once again we see that consciousness cannot be taken out of the equation. (A) simply does not happen, unless the (B) mental processes are in place.

Thirdly, we will turn away from neuroscience, to consider quantum physics (actually, there is also a connection; consider the joint research projects between Stuart Hameroff, a medical doctor, and Roger Penrose, a physicist). Let's just jump straight into it. Under one interpretation of the wavefunction collapse, we would say that:

The chair simply does not exist, unless it is being observed.

And observation requires ..... consciousness.

To understand more of this, you could either read the other thread "Garbage. All of It" where I have just written about this. Or you could try this Wikipedia link. I'll just leave you with this quote from a French physicist quoted in that article:

""The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with Quantum Mechanics and with facts established by experiment.""

[exquisitive]

Excellent post ALG. I need a bit of time to process it all, but it's hitting on a lot of things I've been thinking about with my attempts to incorporate an understanding of subjective reality. I have a bit of work to attend to, but I wanted to check in on this thread. Keep it up!

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Amatrine

Ok I finally found my quirk to this thoery. What about Santa Clause?
Millions of Chilldren think he exists, but he does not. There are no flying reindeer. So even with a strong powerful thought that he exists, he does not.

For the young children who strongly believe that Santa exists, well, effectively he does (in their reality).

For the slightly older children who have begun to suspect that Santa might not exist, well, effectively their reality is one where Santa might not exist.

For the adults who strongly believe that Santa does not exist, Santa no longer exists.

As you grow from a young child into an older child into an adult, your beliefs change, and therefore your reality changes . This generally applies to all your beliefs about anything (not just Santa).

Some of you might find my above explanation implausible. What you need to do is substitute the Santa belief with any other belief (eg "the world is flat" or "I am a useless person" or "God exists" or "it is an honour to die for my country" or "I am a woman"), and examine the examples - what happens in a person's reality, when he holds that belief more strongly, or less strongly, or when that belief changes over time.

For example, the staunch atheist will see no evidence of God anywhere in his reality. In contrast, the staunch believer will see evidence of God everywhere in his reality. Yet staunch atheists are known to become staunch believers, and staunch believers are known to become staunch atheists; and accordingly, their reality undergoes a sharp change as their beliefs change as well.

At this point, you may think - "For this explanation to make sense, first we must decide whether God objectively exists."

Alas ...... if you think about it carefully, you will likely see that in the first place, the very existence of an objective reality is an assumption.

Quote from a letter that Einstein wrote to another famous physicist:

"You are the only contemporary physicist, besides Laue, who sees that one cannot get around the assumption of reality—if only one is honest. Most of them simply do not see what sort of risky game they are playing with reality—reality as something independent of what is experimentally established."

So you see, it's all beliefs in the end. And beliefs are just mental interpretations, products of your consciousness. Why do you think Gautama Buddha said that basically, reality is all illusion? From a practical perspective for the LOA person, the game then becomes one where you try to alter your beliefs so as to create a reality more pleasing, interesting or satisfactory to yourself. It is largely useless to say, "But in the real world, it wasn't really like that!"

Because ... there .... IS ... no ... real world .... See the title of this thread - that was the whole point.

[Spiritual]

ALG, thanks for your explanation. But I still am wondering something which I would like to see you elaborate on, and hopefully you do .

So I understand, perceiving makes something real. But let's use your example of the coma patient again. That person isn't perceiving the chair (what exactly he is perceiving we don't know, but his reality probably has changed).
Yet he is also laying on a bed, which he doesn't perceive yet it is real. Or do you describe this to the reality of the person who looks at the coma patient?

Another example. Let's say a person is in a room which is surrounded by only walls, so the person is "stuck". This person is blind, deaf and lost all kind of feeling. To be short, he has no senses whatsoever.
When this person walks around, he gets blocked by the walls, yet he doesn't know they are there, there is no perceiving.

What do you think of that?

[Acting Like Godot]

Originally Posted by Spiritual

Another example. Let's say a person is in a room which is surrounded by only walls, so the person is "stuck". This person is blind, deaf and lost all kind of feeling. To be short, he has no senses whatsoever.
When this person walks around, he gets blocked by the walls, yet he doesn't know they are there, there is no perceiving.

In the earlier post, we had talked about (A) and (B). (A) refers to the perception, and (B) refers to the mental interpretation of that perception. I had suggested that reality exists only because (B) occurs.

In your current example, (A) is reduced to zero. The person cannot see, hear, feel etc. Your question really is - if (A) is reduced to zero, what happens to (B), and what in turn happens to reality?

We need not speculate, because the answer is actually quite well-known (surprise, surprise). If (A) is reduced to zero, (B) soon generates its own reality anyway. In other words, despite the absence of sense data (sound, light etc), a reality will nevertheless be perceived into existence. This reality however will not resemble what we think of as "normal", "everyday" reality.

From the perspective of our "normal", "everyday" reality, we say that the person has begun to hallucinate. If you click here, you may read about the effects of sensory deprivation.

But let's go one step further.

Presumably you have vision, hearing, sense of touch etc that is normal for a human being. Based on the data you receive through your senses about your environment, you form a certain impression of what "reality" is.

But what if your senses were not what they were? What if, for example, your senses were like those of some animal. Like an owl, in the dark. Or a grasshopper. Or a cat. Or an echolocating bat. Or a bee that can see UV wavelengths that are invisible to the human eye.

Or a homing pigeon, that can sense the patterns of the earth's magnetic field. Or a viper, which can hunt and strike down its prey in perfect darkness because its ability to detect heat is so acute that it knows the exact position of the mouse, just by sensing its body heat.

Surely your reality would become sharply different from what you currently think it is. Yet surely an owl's reality is no less 'real' than yours, or a cat's, or a bat's, or a viper.

Yes .... all these realities are 'real', but all are very different. Whatever happens at (A) plays a big part in reality-creation, because without perception, there is no reality. But what you are actually able to perceive, and what you do perceive, of course, plays a huge role in determining the nature of your reality.

Deepak Chopra gives a striking example concerning a snail. Suppose a rock is two inches in front of a snail. You stick your hand in, remove the rock and replace it with a red flower, all under two seconds. The snail's nervous system is so slow that in effect, it will perceive that the rock has suddenly changed into a flower. It will not have been able to perceive that a human hand had anything to do with this at all.

You repeat, substituting the flower with a pen, and the pen with a bottle, and the bottle with a leaf. To the snail, the flower has miraculously transformed into a pen, then a bottle, then a leaf. The human hand is never perceived at all.

In the same way, we perceive reality to be what we perceive it to be, because of the capabilities and limits of our human senses. If we had more powerful senses, or less powerful senses, or one less sense, or a sixth sense, then we would perceive reality to be something different.

How different? So different that we probably cannot adequately describe it in words. It would be like trying to describe the colour green to a person who had been blind since birth.

In other words, "objective reality" isn't what we perceive reality to be. There IS no "objective reality". Your reality is simply what you perceive it to be (just as a snail's reality is what it perceives it to be). Although your reality is very different from a snail's, your reality, to you, is not more `real' or `less' real than a snail's reality, to itself.

At one level, reality could be said to be nothing more than a large number of subatomic particles moving at vast speeds and perpetually blinking in and out of existence. From the quantum physics point of view, this is a very accurate description of reality. Yet as human beings, we find it very difficult to think of reality like that, because that is not what our senses seem to be telling us.

And that is simply because our senses are not adequate to perceive that, "oh over there, is a bunch of subatomic particles blinking in and out of existence". Instead we merely perceive, "Oh, over there, is a blue chair with a red cushion."

Yet the blue chair and red cushion are merely a bunch of subatomic particles blinking in and out of existence. It is because of how we perceive, that the blue chair and red cushion "came into existence". In other words, our perception / observation effectively created the blue chair and red cushion.

In this post, I have focused on (A), and what would happen if the perception capabilities of our senses were sharply changed - I conclude that the very nature of our reality would change (and that neither reality is less `real' than the other).

In my next post, I may focus on (B), and discuss what would happen if the way we interpret our sensory perceptions is also sharply changed.

In LOA/IM, we can work on both aspects - (A) and (B). While it is true that in my reality, no human being is likely to be able to echolocate like a bat or sense heat like a viper, nevertheless there are ways a human individual can deliberately seek to alter both his (A) and (B) ...

... in other words, what he perceives, AND how he interprets his perceptions ...

.... so as to create a more pleasing or satisfactory or joyful reality for himself. And remember - this improved reality is no less `real' than the reality which had existed, prior to such improvement.